trailblazers, S07 Jennifer Prokop trailblazers, S07 Jennifer Prokop

S07.04: Trailblazer Meg Cabot

We are so thrilled to have thee Meg Cabot with us, one of the original queens of YA romance. We talk about her longstanding writing career, about the authors who inspired her, about her early historical romances, written as Patricia Cabot, about her pivot into young adult romance and the power of the subgenre, about her own love story, and, of course, about The Princess Diaries of it all. It will surprise absolutely no one that Meg is a delight as a guest--we're so grateful for her time and her insight, and she's welcome back any time.

If you also love romance, maybe you want to join our Patreon, where you get another episode from us each month, and access to the incredible readers and listeners and brilliant people on the Fated Mates discord! Support us and learn more at fatedmates.net/patreon.

Our first read along of Season 7 will be Molly O'Keefe's Everything I Left Unsaid duology, selected by Jen which despite the first book being a cliffhanger should not surprise you because she contains multitudes. The second book is The Truth About Him. Read them both and get ready for Jen to talk to you for hours. You will thank us.

Also! We're back on the phonebanking train this election season! Join us Saturdays between now and Election Day to phonebank with fellow romance lovers. Jen & Sarah are joined by special guests who will knock your socks off! Learn more and register at fatedmates.net/fatedstates. If phonebanking isn't your thing, we're also raising money for downticket house and senate races, because state legislatures may not be sexy, but they sure hold all the power. Learn more, and give what you can at fatedmates.net/givingcircle.

Looking for Sarah's Conflict Writing class? It starts this Sunday--find it right here.

Show Notes

 

Books Mentioned This Episode

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S06.06: Trailblazer Nalini Singh

Our Trailblazer conversations continue this week with legend Nalini Singh, whose groundbreaking paranormal series changed the game. We talk about the early days of her writing (when she was a kid!) about building her career in New Zealand, about how she came to publish in the US, about her beautiful relationships with readers, about the way she thinks about her series and how the stories hang together, and about her moves into contemporary and beyond.

We are so grateful to Nalini Singh for making time for us, and for her amazing books.

If you want more Fated Mates in your life, please join our Patreon, which comes with an extremely busy and fun Discord community! Join other magnificent firebirds to hang out, talk romance, and be cool together in a private group full of excellent people. Learn more at patreon.com.

Show Notes

Welcome Nalini Singh, author of dozens of romance novels, including several popular paranormal series. You should subscribe to her newsletter on her site! We did a deep dive of Caressed by Ice in Season 4.

Preorder her new thriller, There Should Have Been Eight, coming November 21st, right now.

Authors & Books: The Time is Short by Nerina Hilliard, Christine Feehan, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Jayne Ann Krentz, Yvonne Lindsay/EV Lind, Karina Bliss, Louisa George, Helen Bianchin, Emma Darcy, JD Robb, Meljean Brook.

Publishing Professionals: Berkley editor Cindy Hwang, bookseller Barbara Clendon owner of Barbara’s Books.

A transcript (by a human being!) is available for this episode.

 

Books Mentioned This Episode

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Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies
Visit microdose.com and use the code FATEDMATES
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Transcript

Nalini Singh 00:00:00 / #: Back then think back to whatever the opportunities were in, say, the US North America for publishing. This is, we have to say this is pre-Indie publishing, pre-eBooks even. Whatever the options were, you have to narrow that down again and again and again by the time you get to New Zealand because very few publishers were taking submissions from outside either the US or the UK. And even books had to be set in America quite often. Or if you're going for the UK publishers that had to be set in London. And I hadn't traveled anywhere at that point. I was a high school kid. And one of the only publishers that was accepting worldwide submissions and were publishing books at Worldwide was Harlequin, Mills & Boon. And then later Silhouette became part of that too. So for me, thinking of how am I actually going to get published, it made a lot of sense to start with the contemporary side of things and start by submitting to Harlequin or Silhouette.

Jennifer Prokop 00:01:15 / #: That was the voice of Nalini Singh, one of the first women of color to write extensively in the paranormal romance space, which is something she's going to talk about with us. Author of both the first and second seasons of the Psy-Changeling series.

Sarah MacLean 00:01:33 / #: I love that. I love the way she thinks about that.

Jennifer Prokop 00:01:36 / #: Along with the Guild Hunter series, the Rock Addiction series and category romances. We're going to talk to Nalini about her journey through romance, the way she perceives herself, the role of New Zealand romance authors, and what it's like to send your first manuscript off when you're a teenager.

Sarah MacLean 00:01:59 / #: The best. This is Fate of Mates everyone. I'm Sarah McLean. I read romance novels and I write them.

Jennifer Prokop 00:02:06 / #: I'm Jennifer Prokop, a romance reader and editor. And without further ado, here's our conversation with Nalini Singh. Welcome, Nalini Singh. We are so excited to have you on Fate of Mates as a trailblazer.

Nalini Singh 00:02:21 / #: I'm so excited to be here. I love the conversations you both have had. Oh, well I obviously, I cannot speak English, on the previous episodes. I really enjoyed. So yeah, it's really fun to be here.

Sarah MacLean 00:02:38 / #: Well, we're so thrilled to have you. We're so thrilled always to have somebody who can talk to us extensively about a subgenre. We immediately, the second we started the Trailblazers, your name went onto the list. So we're so excited to finally be able to do this. Why don't we start with where we start with everyone, which is, how did you come to romance? Why romance?

Nalini Singh 00:03:08 / #: I'm one of those people who has been a lifelong reader from childhood. So I was born in Fiji, which is a very small dot of an island in the Pacific. I think the last time I looked, the entire population is something like 800,000 people across. And it's not one island. We say it's actually islands, lots of islands dotted about. But I remember then, there used to be one big library in Suva City, but then the little mobile book buses would come to school. And that was my favorite.

00:03:43 / #: And I always used to get on and be like, okay, I can't wait until I'm old enough, until they let me go into the grownup section of the book bus because I had to be in the kids and young adult section. And when we moved to New Zealand, there were all these libraries and each of the suburbs has a library, and then there's the big Central City library. And I was just like, this is heaven. So I think my love of writing definitely came from my love of reading. And in terms of how I found myself in romance particularly, I think I started reading romance quite early at the Mills & Boons.

Sarah MacLean 00:04:26 / #: Same.

Jennifer Prokop 00:04:27 / #: Us too.

Sarah MacLean 00:04:29 / #: So do you remember who those authors were, the books that really brought you to the genre?

Nalini Singh 00:04:35 / #: Yeah, yeah. I went to see my aunt at one point, and she was a huge Mills & Boon reader, and she gave me this whole bag of books that I literally brought back on the plane. And I had people like Betty Neal's and is it Anne Mather?

Jennifer Prokop 00:04:54 / #: Ann Mather, sure.

Nalini Singh 00:04:54 / #: Emma Darcy, Miranda Lee, Robin Donnells-

Sarah MacLean 00:05:00 / #: The classics.

Jennifer Prokop 00:05:01 / #: Yeah.

Nalini Singh 00:05:02 / #: Yeah. The classics. I grew up on those and there was this one book that really made an impact. And I think she only ever wrote six romances, Nerina Hilliard.

Jennifer Prokop 00:05:12 / #: Oh, I know that name.

Nalini Singh 00:05:15 / #: Yeah, the Time Is Short. That's the title. And I was obsessed with this book, and it's one of the old school Mills & Boons that were quite thick, quite big books. They weren't the shorter categories now. And it's classic, classic romance. She's dying of this brain tumor. And then she goes to this island and she's falling in love with this guy who's this billionaire kind of thing. I need to reread that because I've still got the copy still. Still got my old copy.

Jennifer Prokop 00:05:44 / #: I have also bought the first romances I ever read from the bag in my grandma's basement. And listen, they're still bangers. They're still so good.

Nalini Singh 00:05:53 / #: They're so good.

Sarah MacLean 00:05:54 / #: So she miraculously survives the tumor?

Nalini Singh 00:05:57 / #: I think there's an emergency surgery at one point, and I think the surgeon had a traumatic pass, so it was also his... Because it's a bigger book, so you could have some flux and all of that. But yeah, I just fell in love with those books. And I think it was the emotions that looking back, when I was younger, I obviously didn't analyze them in that way. I was just reading for the joy of it. But I think that the emotional impact of those books really, really struck me hard. And that was my gateway into romance. But then I was also reading a lot of science fiction and fantasy, and a lot of those books actually have a thread of romance. And I was realizing that I wanted more romance in my science fiction and fantasy and more world building fantasy stuff in my romance. So that's how I got into Paranormal Romance. I just squashed together everything I loved. And I remember finding the first paranormal romance as I read, and I was like, "Wow, it's a thing. It's a thing."

Jennifer Prokop 00:07:11 / #: So what was that for you? Because I feel like we talk a lot about 2005 and 2006, there's this huge explosion, but there definitely were vampires before, right?

Nalini Singh 00:07:23 / #: Yeah. Yeah.

Jennifer Prokop 00:07:24 / #: So what were the things that you were reading before you started writing Psy-Changelings?

Nalini Singh 00:07:30 / #: Oh, they were actually published before then. So I think some of the authors I was reading was like Christine Feehan, her Dark series was probably one of the first and Sherrilyn Kenyon, those are the two big names that were ahead of the curve. But even more ahead of the curve was Jane Ann Krentz, who under Jane Castle. And even under her Krentz name, I think she wrote-

Sarah MacLean 00:08:01 / #: Sweet Starfire.

Nalini Singh 00:08:03 / #: Yes, Sweet Starfire, Crystal Flame, all of those books. I am an obsessed fan-girl of her just so you know.

Sarah MacLean 00:08:10 / #: So are we.

Jennifer Prokop 00:08:10 / #: We had her on-

Sarah MacLean 00:08:14 / #: If you haven't listened to the Jane Ann Krentz episode of Fated Mates go immediately to do that. It will change your entire life.

Nalini Singh 00:08:21 / #: Oh my gosh.

Jennifer Prokop 00:08:21 / #: It's so good. Yeah, I think about it all the time.

Nalini Singh 00:08:26 / #: She's such a good speaker. I haven't got to that episode yet, so now, I'm just going to fast-forward through everything and get to it. But yeah, she was doing stuff I think, before almost anyone else. And I have spoken to her and I have listened to her speak and she's like, "Oh yeah, I almost killed my career doing that because nobody was ready for it."

Jennifer Prokop 00:08:48 / #: Well, and that's it too. It's like if you're before the wave, it's easy to just go under as opposed to writing it into claim and a fame.

Sarah MacLean 00:08:58 / #: So can we talk about that wave? Because it feels like it was a huge crashing wave in the early aughts. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how it felt at the time. Was it clear that it was just paranormal was everywhere or coming everywhere?

Nalini Singh 00:09:20 / #: Yeah. There was definitely a lot of authors coming up with paranormal. The funny thing is most people don't realize, but I came in on the end and I remember my editor, so my editor, Cindy Hwang, who I've had for well, 18 years now, I think, something like that. She said they were actually not buying any more paranormals when my book ended up on her desk.

Sarah MacLean 00:09:50 / #: Oh, interesting.

Nalini Singh 00:09:52 / #: Yeah. But she loved Life Dissensations so much she actually went to the publisher and said, "I know we're not buying paranormals, but I think we should buy this one." So I came in when they said paranormal was actually on the down trend.

Sarah MacLean 00:10:08 / #: Interesting.

Nalini Singh 00:10:08 / #: And I think I do believe the reports of its demise were too soon. Too early.

Jennifer Prokop 00:10:14 / #: Yeah.

Sarah MacLean 00:10:16 / #: Yeah. It didn't feel like it ended that already.

Nalini Singh 00:10:17 / #: It didn't. But yeah, so that was an interesting time because there are a lot of big paranormal names already. The big series were already out there. And then, so I came along and yeah, so it was really good. I found an editor that got me and here we are. But it really was, I think, the heyday of paranormal as a subgenre, because I remember you both probably do as well, on Smart Bitches, Trashy books. They did the Save the Contemporary campaign.

Jennifer Prokop 00:10:52 / #: Save the Contemporary.

Nalini Singh 00:10:53 / #: Yeah. Because-

Jennifer Prokop 00:10:54 / #: Doesn't that seem wild now?

Nalini Singh 00:10:57 / #: I know. And now, contemporary is everywhere, but back then, it was historical and paranormal were really ascendant and you didn't really have very many contemporaries taking the spotlight. And I think it's flipped now. Contemporaries are just rolling the roast and the other subgenres are at the back of it a bit. But I think if you've been around long enough in the industry, you see the cycles. Yeah.

Sarah MacLean 00:11:24 / #: Yeah.

Jennifer Prokop 00:11:26 / #: There are huge boom and bust cycles. I feel like whatever romance gods there are also ruled like the stock market and the Rockefeller's Bank account, like boom and bust. That's all we know.

Sarah MacLean 00:11:39 / #: Well wait-

Jennifer Prokop 00:11:40 / #: No nothing in the middle.

Sarah MacLean 00:11:41 / #: Before we go much further, I want to name though, that your first book was not Slave to Sensation.

Nalini Singh 00:11:47 / #: No, no.

Sarah MacLean 00:11:48 / #: So could you take us back a little bit and talk to us about the very beginning? Why did you start writing? What were you writing? How did you become a published author?

Nalini Singh 00:12:02 / #: Okay. So like I said, obsessed with romances, obsessed with writing. And I decided quite early that I wanted to write a novel. And funnily enough, one of the first things I wrote was looking back as a science fiction romance. It's like [inaudible 00:12:20 / #]. It's like about a prince with lasers coming out of his eyes and he can't fall in love because there's lasers killing everybody.

Jennifer Prokop 00:12:28 / #: Perfect.

Nalini Singh 00:12:29 / #: I was quite young, okay?

Jennifer Prokop 00:12:30 / #: No, this is perfect.

Nalini Singh 00:12:34 / #: But part of it was the reason... So I started in category romance, and one of the reasons I started, well, there's multiple reasons. One is that I think for world building, I needed to learn all the stuff and I didn't feel... I was still doing it, but I just never had that sweet spot where I felt like I created something different and unique and that everything felt shallow at that stage that I was building. But I had the romance down. I felt like I had the romance down at least. And back then, think back to whatever the opportunities were in, say the US, North America for publishing, we have to say this is pre indie publishing, pre eBooks even.

00:13:27 / #: Whatever the options were, you have to narrow that down again and again and again by the time you get to New Zealand because very few publishers were taking submissions from outside, either the US or the UK, and even books had to be set in America quite often. Or if you're going for the UK publishers, they had to be set in London. And I hadn't traveled anywhere at that point. I was a high school kid and one of the only publishers that was accepting worldwide submissions and where publishing books at worldwide was Harlequin, Mills & Boon. And then later, Silhouette became part of that too.

00:14:14 / #: So for me, thinking of how am I actually going to get published, it made a lot of sense to start with the contemporary side of things and things start by submitting to Harlequin or Silhouette. And I did my first submission in high school, okay?

Sarah MacLean 00:14:34 / #: Amazing.

Nalini Singh 00:14:35 / #: I was so proud. It was a terrible book, but I'm so proud. I wrote a whole book and it was called-

Sarah MacLean 00:14:41 / #: Yeah, that's amazing.

Nalini Singh 00:14:44 / #: The heroine had a broken leg and the title was, and A Broken Heart too. I still have that book, you guys. I made my best friend at high school read it and she was like, "I guess it's good." She wasn't a romance reader at all.

Sarah MacLean 00:15:08 / #: Wait, so what happened? Now I need to know. So you submitted?

Nalini Singh 00:15:13 / #: Oh my God, I should have pulled out.

Sarah MacLean 00:15:14 / #: Did you get a letter back? Did you get letters back?

Nalini Singh 00:15:18 / #: I got not a letter. It's like a, what you call it? Compliment slip.

Sarah MacLean 00:15:23 / #: Yeah, like a little slip.

Nalini Singh 00:15:23 / #: Basically said, no, we don't want it.

Jennifer Prokop 00:15:23 / #: We received mail from you. That's all we're willing to say.

Sarah MacLean 00:15:30 / #: No of those slips are legendary. Yeah.

Nalini Singh 00:15:33 / #: I know. I still have it.

Sarah MacLean 00:15:36 / #: Oh my gosh. But Baby Nalini did a thing. That's amazing.

Jennifer Prokop 00:15:40 / #: Yeah.

Nalini Singh 00:15:40 / #: I did. And I'm so proud because I knew nobody in the industry. I knew less than nobody. I actually called up the distributor for Mills & Boon in New Zealand and said, "Oh, how can I submit to them?" And they were so nice because Harlequin has those, I don't know if they still do, they had these forms that they had the information on how you could submit. And the distributors like, "Oh, we've got one of these, shall I send it to you?" This is New Zealand guys. They're so nice.

Sarah MacLean 00:16:09 / #: Amazing.

Jennifer Prokop 00:16:09 / #: That's amazing.

Sarah MacLean 00:16:13 / #: You know, Nalini, somebody else we talked to had this story.

Jennifer Prokop 00:16:16 / #: It was Mary Balogh. She sent it to the warehouse and somebody read it and passed it on.

Sarah MacLean 00:16:21 / #: Forwarded it on. Yeah.

Nalini Singh 00:16:23 / #: Yeah. You have to be a self-starter in this industry. And I think back then, that was how you did it. You had to get in front of somebody, and if you didn't know anything, you just rang around and until you found some information.

Sarah MacLean 00:16:38 / #: So at this point, because now there's a very robust community in New Zealand, a romance writing community in New Zealand. But at the time, at least you didn't know about it.

Nalini Singh 00:16:48 / #: I didn't know it. So I'd actually submitted, I would say probably three or four manuscripts, or maybe three. By the time I saw this little article in the local newspaper about the Romance Writers of New Zealand conference. And I think at that time, maybe it was maybe the third or fourth conference, so, I hadn't been around super long, and I was like, "Wow." It's the first time I heard of other people in New Zealand trying to do this, and I knew that Robin Donald and Susan Napier and Daphne Claire wrote for Harlequin. So I knew there were authors in New Zealand who did it, but the idea of actually meeting any of them was just completely... They were celebrities and how was I going to meet them, this kid from the suburbs kind of thing.

00:17:41 / #: And so my mom actually paid for me to go to the conference as my birthday present. So she's always been so supportive. She had to sit there. I was sitting in the kitchen reading the prints with the lasers coming out to her. She's like, "Oh yeah, that's really good." And she's cooking dinner.

Sarah MacLean 00:18:00 / #: Oh, I love that.

Nalini Singh 00:18:04 / #: Yeah. So that was the time I actually met a group of writers, basically any writers. Before then, my only access to writers was probably literary fiction writers that came to school to give talks and stuff. And I still remember walking into that room and it was a very small conference back then, I would say probably less than 50 people. And so it was, we were all in one room and just chatting. And they had speakers and they had actual editors from Mills & Boon because they had offices down here, and they would come and wow, it blew my mind. I learned a lot from RWNZ and it's a really nice community of people and it's very small. It's not associated with any other bigger group, so RWNZ is its own entity. And it's always kept, I think it's heart very well.

00:19:05 / #: And I think when you have a smaller group, it tends to be like that. You tend to stick together more because I think even now, the entire membership is something like 300 people. So it's tiny, just super supportive and so much knowledge. And that's where I learned to actually do proper submissions and stuff. So all this time, I'd just been sending them manuscripts, single-spaced because it cost less money to [inaudible 00:19:32 / #].

00:19:34 / #: Yeah. So that's when I really started to do some crafts, so now, I've learned some crafts. But a lot of my learning, I would say, came from just obsessively writing because I just did it over and over and over again. And then I started submitting and then I actually got picked up out of the slush pile in New York, and I didn't sell the first I think, book that got picked up by the slush pile, but the editor said, "Send it to me directly next time." So I did the next book. And I wasn't even writing three chapters in a synopsis. I was writing four books because at this point, it's book 10. And she asked for revisions and I did the revisions and yeah, that was the book that sold.

Sarah MacLean 00:20:23 / #: Who was that? Do you remember?

Nalini Singh 00:20:26 / #: Yeah, Diane Deitz at Silhouette. She's not an editor anymore. She was my editor for I think, two or three books. But I'll always remember her because she was the one who bought my very, very first book. Yeah.

Jennifer Prokop 00:20:41 / #: And so how old were you when that happened?

Nalini Singh 00:20:48 / #: I got the call for the sale the day before my 25th birthday.

Jennifer Prokop 00:20:54 / #: Wow, that's amazing.

Sarah MacLean 00:20:56 / #: And you'd written 10 books already.

Nalini Singh 00:20:58 / #: Yeah.

Sarah MacLean 00:20:58 / #: Oh my gosh, what a hustle.

Nalini Singh 00:21:03 / #: I just wanted to do it, the passion of it. That's what I wanted to do. Yeah.

Sarah MacLean 00:21:10 / #: This week's episode of Fated Mates is brought to you by Andrea Janell, the author of No Doubts, the fifth book in the Willow Creek series. So as we know, Willow Creek is a nice little small town and Alaric, who is a driven astrophysicist, who has twin daughters who need a chance to reconnect with their aunt, also needs a little bit of time to finish his book, which-

Jennifer Prokop 00:21:38 / #: He probably needs a quiet small town.

Sarah MacLean 00:21:40 / #: Listen, very relatable. What he does not have time for is shenanigans, certainly not age gap, grumpy sunshine shenanigans with Farrah, the adorable niece of the owner of this bed and breakfast that he's in. Farrah's whole life has been turned upside down, very topsy-turvy since the pandemic. And she is back in Willow Creek to just have a moment of peace. But as we know, there is no peace in the age gap, grumpy, sunshine, romance.

Jennifer Prokop 00:22:18 / #: No, he can't deal with her sunshine, that's Sarah. He's so grumpy.

Sarah MacLean 00:22:21 / #: He cannot deal with the sunshine she is providing turn down service of all kinds, I think. And listen, if you love a bed and breakfast, a grumpy astrophysicist hero and a heroine who just wants to give him a little love, this is for you.

Jennifer Prokop 00:22:40 / #: Well, and we've also had readers who are interested in single parents and widowers. So this really hits a lot of the things that sometimes people like in a hero. So you can get No Doubts in print or ebook or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited. Thank you to Andrea Janell for sponsoring this week's episode.

00:23:01 / #: So when you then really transition from category to paranormal, did you have a sense that you were really, I don't know, it just became such a massive success, the whole Psy-Changeling series? Or did you really feel like it was, like you said earlier you were too late for it. When did you realize that maybe they weren't quite right about paranormal being over?

Nalini Singh 00:23:30 / #: I think when I started to actually, when I became full-time as a writer, because that took several years as well. And also, because I'm super-conservative, even though I quit my day job after selling my first book, people don't do this. I was young and I was like, "You know what? If I'm probably going to quit my day job at any point, it might as well be now, during my eating noodles every night if I have to." I kept doing part-time work for a long time because I really was like, I need to be in a position where I can support myself. Because writing income is very erratic. It's not like a job where you get paid weekly or bi-weekly.

00:24:19 / #: Yeah, I think when I actually went full time, I was like, okay, yeah, this is happening. These books have got legs and yeah. Maybe. Yeah. And I think also, I think it was probably around the same time that the first book actually, so the first book to hit the big bestseller list was I think the fourth book in the Psy-Changeling series. So Mine to Possess hit the extended New York Times bestseller list. And yeah, it really felt like, okay, because prior to that, I was very aware that series don't always get room to spread, that readers don't get interested in them, or for whatever reason, it doesn't strike a chord. And then that's it. Back then, there was no way to finish them. You stopped and you started writing something else. And so it felt like, wow, this is actually picking up readers as it goes along, which is a really nice feeling when you're starting something completely new. Yeah.

Jennifer Prokop 00:25:38 / #: So you started the Archangel series. So at some point, you had two paranormal series going. You're a very prolific writer, you produce. So was that something you just had a urge to write, another series in another world? Or were you trying to branch out? What was your thinking about starting a second new series when we already know that series can be a little dicey.

Nalini Singh 00:26:09 / #: Yeah. So you know how I said I wrote obsessively all through school and stuff? So I wrote through uni and I went to law school as well. So I wrote through that. I wrote through being a junior lawyer. So by the time I got to be a full-time writer, I was like, "I have so much time. I have so much time." Because I was so used to writing in really concentrated chunks. I would have 45 minutes maybe, if I was lucky in a day, and I would just write. And so once I got over the, I don't know, if you find this, Sarah, but when I went full time at first I was like, I have so much time. It takes a while to sit.

Jennifer Prokop 00:26:49 / #: Yeah, yeah. You waste so much time. I think when you-

Nalini Singh 00:26:52 / #: So much time. Because you don't realize. Yeah. But once I settled down, I realized my writing pace and the way I wrote was such that I had a lot of room to do something else. And I said to my agent, I've already got this one series and it's quite a complex series, and I knew what I wanted to do with it. And I knew the complexity was going to grow. And I thought, I'm going to write some standalones in between, so I'll write standalone stuff, which will be easier on my brain and it'll refresh me between the Psy-Changeling books. And what I did not realize is, I write series-

Jennifer Prokop 00:27:40 / #: Yes.

Sarah MacLean 00:27:41 / #: Is that you can't stop world building.

Nalini Singh 00:27:43 / #: Yeah. So especially in paranormal or urban fantasy spaces, I wrote Angel's Blood and I kept telling myself it was a standalone. And so now, a lot of people look back and say, "Oh, you put the seven in place and they were all going to have books." No, they weren't. They were just going to exist in this one book was, that was the plan.

Sarah MacLean 00:28:06 / #: That's against the rules of romance.

Nalini Singh 00:28:07 / #: It's quite funny. Everybody was like, "You know you're writing a series?" I'm like, "No, it's one book." But, it was an accidental series, that one. It was just by the time I got to the end, I was like, okay, well, I can't stop now. The world was too big and there was too much I wanted to do with it.

Sarah MacLean 00:28:30 / #: Did you have a group of, because I'm fascinated by writing on the other side of the world right, right now, we're however many hours apart, you're in tomorrow as we talk. Did you have a community of other writers in New Zealand who you were connecting with or were you connecting with the other paranormal authors around the world? What was your community like during all of this?

Nalini Singh 00:28:59 / #: So at first, I had my local group, they're amazing. And you have to remember, the online spaces just didn't really exist the way they do now. So I think there were a few message boards and stuff, but I just wasn't on them. I just wasn't aware of them. I think at that time, you were really online if you were a bit more techy, if you had the knowledge to get into those spaces. So I was very local and I had such an amazing group of people here. I am still friends with them to this day. We still get together regularly.

00:29:38 / #: My friend, Yvonne Lindsay, she wrote tons of books for Desire and she's writing thrillers now under EV Lind. She was one of my first friends. And then Karina Bliss, she wrote the Rock Star books. Louisa George, Tessa Radly, there's so many names. My friend Shah, who is more into marketing side of things. My friend Pera, these are people who have been in my life for 20 years and counting. And it was just such a nice group of people and we supported each other and on the next level up, so these were people I grew with. We all started on the ground floor, we're submitting, we're writing stuff, we're trying things out, we're sharing information.

00:30:25 / #: But on the next level up, we had people like Robin Donald, Daphne Claire, who were really, really generous with their time and just really helped support younger writers coming up. They used to run a romance writing course up north, and they actually invited me up there at one point and they were just so encouraging and telling me, "Yeah, you can do this. This is what maybe you need to do with your work to take it to the next level." So they were brilliant. And then we had the writers from Australia who came over and the conference and stuff like Helen Bianchin and Emma Darcy, just so much knowledge in those heads.

00:31:18 / #: And on the other side of things, there's a bookseller here, Barbara Clendon, she used to run Barbara's books and she's retired from that now. But she was just a wealth of information because she was a small Indie bookseller and she used to bring in books from the US like books we would get nowhere else in the major bookstores because you know the major bookstores just had general spread of books. She was the one who had Christine Feehan and then Sherrilyn Kenyon and JD Robb. And she literally put JD Robb in my hand and said, "You're going to like this book."

00:32:00 / #: I have now read every single J.D Robb ever created. So she was right, but she's still a friend of mine. And just the information that she would share with us, because she kept us up to date with what was actually happening in the industry. She used to actually give little talks and say, "This is what's selling, and this is the new books coming out." And see, I had a really, really lovely community here, and I think I really started to build connections overseas after I attended my very first conference in the US, which was I think in 2006. Yeah, 2006. I was meeting people face to face. And prior to that, oh, I know the Harlequin boards, there were the Harlequin boards. That's where I met people before the conference.

Sarah MacLean 00:32:57 / #: These boards, I was never on those boards, but they were legend. People talk about those boards. They were incredible.

Nalini Singh 00:33:06 / #: I think they were one of the biggest spaces for romance readers and writers to interact. And I made a lot of friends on there that I met for the first time at that conference. And then from there, I felt like I was online a bit more. And so I started to make connections with people in my subgenre because there wasn't really anybody writing that here. So to make those connections, I had to go online and it helped that to Berkeley, my publisher, published a lot of people who wrote Paranormal, and so I was making friends. I got along really well with Meljean Brooke.

00:33:49 / #: And then, yeah, the names are just going [inaudible 00:33:56 / #] on my head, like I said, but there were so many people and we used to get together and do promotion things together and all organized online. So the community has grown now, I think considerably because I've been around a long time and I've met a lot of people, but also, I've met people just online. There's people I've never met in real life, but because we've been friends for so long online, it feels like it's a friendship just as deep. Yeah.

Sarah MacLean 00:34:30 / #: This week's episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by Lumi Labs, creators of microdose gummies.

Jennifer Prokop 00:34:36 / #: Well, Sarah, let me tell you, as you know, I have been sick.

Sarah MacLean 00:34:40 / #: I know for weeks. Poor baby.

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Jennifer Prokop 00:35:41 / #: Bronchitis forever.

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00:36:16 / #: So you mentioned readers earlier, so can you talk to us a little bit about your reader community? Is there a moment you can share about the personal or emotional impact that your books have had on readers?

Nalini Singh 00:36:33 / #: Yeah. I remember getting my very first email. That was pretty amazing. It was a fan mail, and it was from Nigeria. The first person ever to write to me was from Nigeria. So apparently, it was a huge romance reading community over there, and I actually got letters from there as well. But yeah, one thing that happened after Slave to Sensation, which I guess I wasn't ready for because I hadn't realized what I'd done, so this sounds weird, but I started getting letters saying, "Oh my God, it's so nice to see a person of color as the heroine." And okay, I am a person of color. And I had never realized that all these paranormals I'd read had no people of color as the heroine, the main protagonist. And so I was like, whoa. And then I went back and I looked through all these books and I was like, wow. Yeah.

00:37:42 / #: And so I felt like I did something there that I was giving something to these readers that hadn't existed before. And so that was one thing that happened that really struck me, and it struck with me to this day getting those messages because they just started coming organically. And then I've heard some really heartbreaking letters from readers over the years who've read something at a time when they just needed to read and escape. And that's why I say when someone says romance is escapism, and I say, "What's wrong with that?" Sometimes you need to escape in a really bad situation. And I've cried, some of these letters are so heart-breaking. Actually ended up becoming friends with a lady who wrote to me and said she was going through chemo, and she really wanted to know the end of this particular thing. And she wasn't sure it was going to be out by the time because she was in a bad situation.

00:38:56 / #: And so I actually told her what the... I'm going to cry, but she did beat it. And then we stayed in touch for a long time, and then one day, she didn't reply anymore. And I still think about that, and I think that in the end that she did pass away. But it's these moments that you build connections with people that maybe you will never meet and having an impact on their life, whether big or small.

00:39:33 / #: There's one letter I remember where someone wrote to me, and they just had a bad day. They just had a bad day. Someone yelled at them at work, they got splashed by the bus while they're walking home. They were completely wet. And they came home and there was bills on the floor in the litter box, and they were just crying. And then they saw their book had come, and then they just decided, you know what? They dried off. They opened the book, they made a cup of tea, and they read. And they just found a little piece of happiness. And I think that's just as important. Just those moments we give readers. So I never take it for granted. I think it's such a beautiful connection we can make. Yeah.

Sarah MacLean 00:40:18 / #: Well, and you do such powerful reader service. You're so connected to readers. I'm a subscriber to your newsletter. I see how much work you put into your newsletters. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about all of that craft that you do, the writing that you do that is for readers without any... They don't have to buy it, you just provide it to them. And I think that's really special and very unique. I don't think there are that many writers who do that kind of work for readers.

Jennifer Prokop 00:40:57 / #: And for people who don't know, you have so many short stories, for example, in the Psy-Changeling world, there's all these on ramps that are, it's not just the novels. There's so much extra stuff, and it really is delightful as a reader to feel that there's just more out there.

Sarah MacLean 00:41:15 / #: Well, and it feels like a gift every time an email comes through.

Nalini Singh 00:41:20 / #: So thank you for that. Yeah, it started because I was writing stuff just to explore characters and things, I would just write... Because some of them are vignettes. They're not full short stories, so you have to know the characters to appreciate. And then some of them are full short stories with the beginning and middle and the end. And I remember, because I'm a reader, I am a reader at heart. So it's like, what would I like to get as a reader? And I was like, "I want to know more about my favorite characters." I'm the person who's making up the story in my head after the final page of the book because I want to know what the next bit of the story is. And so I actually asked my readers, I said, "Do you want the stuff?" And they're like, "Of course we want this. What are you talking about?"

Sarah MacLean 00:42:13 / #: Yes, we want the stuff.

Nalini Singh 00:42:16 / #: So that's how it started. And I still do it for the fun of it. I write these at night usually, or just randomly, I'm sitting in an airport, I write it. Because these characters live and breathe in my head, particularly in the series, because I've lived with them so long. They have their own personalities, they have their own quirks, and the timeline of their story continues past the books. And so in the newsletter, it's such a nice way to be able to share that with readers. And yeah, it's just been very organic. And I always think, in my newsletters, what do I like getting from other writers whose newsletters I subscribe to? What makes me happy? What makes me want to open... Because I've always thought of my newsletter as a connection with my readers, so I don't want them to see it and they think, oh, another newsletter, it's just really silly, because we're all subscribed to so many things these days.

00:43:22 / #: So I want it to be something that they actually want to open, that they want to read, and that actually gives them a little bit of happiness in the day. And I always find it so cool when people email me and say, "Oh, I saved it to read with my cup of tea in the afternoon," kind of thing. And I thought, that's so cool. That's what I want. And I used to do it completely on my own. I have an assistant now, so she helps with putting links and all of that, doing the formatting and stuff. So that's really helpful. But the writing is still me because I think it's really important that I'm the one that's speaking to my readers with their newsletter because it is a one-on-one connection with each reader. And I have fun with it.

00:44:04 / #: And I think if somebody else was going to think about doing stuff like this, you have to have fun with it. You have to enjoy it as a writer. And that's what comes through. I write these fun little stories about the bear cubs getting covered in flour because they decided to make a cake in the middle of the night, and that cracks me up. I'm laughing along as I'm writing, and so it doesn't feel like work. It's just like I'm just having a bit of fun.

Jennifer Prokop 00:44:35 / #: It's just joy.

Nalini Singh 00:44:36 / #: Yeah, it's just joy.

Jennifer Prokop 00:44:37 / #: So I have two very good friends named Kelly, and one of them is a huge Psy-Changeling reader. And I was like, "Okay, Kelly, what do you want me to ask Nalini?" And she said, "Is Alice Eldridge ever going to get a story, a vignette? An anything?" And I was like, "I'll ask her." Let's see what she says.

Sarah MacLean 00:44:57 / #: This is the first time for a Trailblazer interview where we've-

Jennifer Prokop 00:45:00 / #: Yes, I know. I was like, I have a very personal question from a friend of mine. Alice Eldridge, what's going to happen?

Nalini Singh 00:45:06 / #: So Alice is an interesting character because even though we have known her for a long time in the book world, the timeline hasn't actually moved very fast. The Psy-Changeling series started in 2079 and we're in 2083 now. And so Alice hasn't had a lot of time to adapt to what's happened. So I've never forgotten her. I never forget any of these people. But with the Psy-Changeling series, there is a very strong overarching story structure. And so it's always like, who is important to this part of that story structure? So sometimes, it's like, well, I can't actually get a character in just because I want to see them, right? Yeah. So the answer is, I haven't forgotten her. And it is possible. It is possible something will happen, but she's not growing really old or anything out there.

Sarah MacLean 00:46:15 / #: I have a structure question for you. I wonder, sometimes you talk to authors, especially authors who do such intense world building in paranormal or urban fantasy, and the series is complete in their head. They maybe haven't gotten to the end, but they know what the end game is. They know how many books there are, they know what the plan is. But Psy-Changeling, there's this intense world building. But it sounds like what you're really saying is you don't have an end in mind. Is it expansive in that way? Or do you have a, eventually we're going to get to this place, idea?

Nalini Singh 00:47:00 / #: So I'm a little bit in between. So basically I think it's really important when you start a series to navigate because it stops the tangential meandering off into-

Sarah MacLean 00:47:11 / #: These extra-

Nalini Singh 00:47:12 / #: La La Land. Yeah. So if you look at the first series of the Psy-Changeling series, book one to book 15, it is a very specific, can I just spoiler things? I'm just going to spoiler.

Sarah MacLean 00:47:24 / #: Yeah.

Jennifer Prokop 00:47:24 / #: Yes, that's fine. Yeah.

Nalini Singh 00:47:26 / #: So we begin with silence and by book 15, silence has fallen. So that was the main arc of that first season. That's what I wanted to do. And originally, I thought that would be where the series ended because we have the beginning and we have the ending. And I was really satisfied with the story I told, but then I realized when we got to that point that, what now? I messed everything up for these people.

Jennifer Prokop 00:48:01 / #: [inaudible 00:47:59 / #]. Right?

Nalini Singh 00:48:01 / #: So the problems are still there. So the next season began very naturally from that point, which is okay, we are at that point where silence has fallen, but the silence is not in a great place. They still have the issues that led them to choose silences, choose this life without emotion. And so what were they going to do now? And then I actually had to sit down and think about what I want to do in season two. So season two also is going towards a particular point. So I'm always leading readers towards a particular point. The one thing I don't know is how many books it'll take to get there, because that part, I allow to just happen naturally. It could take 10 books to get to the end of season two, it could take eight books. I don't know. It could take another 15.

Jennifer Prokop 00:48:52 / #: I love that you talk about them as seasons. It feels right.

Nalini Singh 00:48:58 / #: Yeah, because I learned this from watching television because if you look at a really well-written series of television, you'll see the arc, it's complete. And you have that satisfaction even though you might be going into season two with a different arc. And so a really good example of this, it's an old series, is Heroes. The first season of Heroes is really, well-written it. It's structured, so you can see where it's leading. And then you see the series where they start out with a really good concept, but they actually haven't thought of the ending.

Jennifer Prokop 00:49:28 / #: And it's messy.

Nalini Singh 00:49:30 / #: And then you don't get... It's messy. So I didn't want the mess. And so always, I consciously... I'm not a plotter as such book by book, but I plot that series arc. I know where I'm taking my readers. I know where we're going to end up, and for me, that's enough. If I have that, it keeps everything else in order if I have that overarching storyline.

Sarah MacLean 00:49:55 / #: And when you say where you're going to end up, is that as clear for you in terms of the couple that that book is going to be? Do you think about it from the character perspective too like there is a big book that we'll be moving toward?

Nalini Singh 00:50:13 / #: Sometimes. Sometimes. And then every so often, I get a bit of a shock because it doesn't quite work out how I think.

Sarah MacLean 00:50:21 / #: Yeah, same.

Nalini Singh 00:50:23 / #: So I leave that open. That's why people say, oh, is so-and-so going to get a book? Maybe. We'll see.

Jennifer Prokop 00:50:29 / #: Yeah. With you.

Nalini Singh 00:50:32 / #: Yeah, because there is growth in the series as well. I am not a person who has mapped up my character arcs five books a ahead. So every so often, someone comes along and is like, I'm really interesting, or there's something unusual happens. And so I like that. I like having the flexibility, but again, because I know the overall arc, it doesn't matter so much. I can let my characters grow naturally and just go with it. Because if a character is growing towards the main story arc, they're the one who's going to end up with the book. And if a character is growing away from the main story arc, they'll still be there in the series, but they might not end up as a main protagonist.

Jennifer Prokop 00:51:25 / #: So you go from paranormal to a rock band and rugby players, and Rock Hard is probably one of my favorite books of all time. I've read that book so many times. So what made you want to step away and do a contemporary series in the middle of all that?

Nalini Singh 00:51:50 / #: I think it was, again, that thing of needing a change for my brain, because at that point, I was writing two paranormal series, so the Guild Hunter Series is a little bit more urban fantasy, and then I've got my paranormal paranormal series, and I was like, I really need something different. And I do like to challenge myself as well just to see if I can do stuff. And quite often, I would just write it, I'll write the book and then give it to my agent is a whole thing. I don't advertise it. I don't tell anyone I'm doing it because I think it's good to just do stuff as a writer for myself and without any pressure. And if it doesn't work, then it's fine. Only I know about it.

00:52:39 / #: Yeah. But the funny thing with Rock Addiction, which started this contemporary books, is I actually started writing that years ago, years before it was published, but I just wasn't in the right head-space to do it. I feel like, I don't know, it just didn't feel right. And then one day, I was going through my works in progress and I was like, oh, I remember this one. And that day, I had it. It just worked. And so I ran with it and it didn't feel different or unusual to me because I did start with category romance, which is contemporary romance in a short format. So I just was able to move into contemporary romance in a longer format, which I think suits me better. I was never a very good category writer. Honestly, I could not sell hardly... I wrote Slave to Sensation because I was just enraged, [inaudible 00:53:35 / #] because I could not sell into category because it's the square box, round whole thing. I just didn't-

Jennifer Prokop 00:53:42 / #: It was the wrong distance for you, right?

Nalini Singh 00:53:44 / #: Yeah.

Jennifer Prokop 00:53:44 / #: Some people run a marathon, some people run a 10K.

Nalini Singh 00:53:49 / #: It was too long. I just like to write longer and stuff. Yeah, so, it just felt really natural to do contemporaries. And so the same with my thrillers that I write now, it's something different. So I have a bit of a break between the paranormals, which I love. I will always write speculative fiction in some way, I think, but it's really nice to do these other things as well. And I feel like I learn new writing techniques with each different thing I do.

Jennifer Prokop 00:54:25 / #: So what would you say are the hallmarks then, of a Nalini Singh book?

Nalini Singh 00:54:31 / #: So it took me a long time to figure this out. Some of my friends are like, oh yeah, this is my... Oh, they used a particular word. There's the fingerprint-

Jennifer Prokop 00:54:41 / #: Core story.

Sarah MacLean 00:54:42 / #: Core story.

Nalini Singh 00:54:42 / #: The core story, yeah. Yeah. And I was like, I don't know. It took me a long time and I realized it's the same thing I like to read is the same thing I write, which is I write families, so not just like blood related families. I write found families. I write friendships that are like family. I have the Arrow squad which is a lethal assassins, but they're all tightly bonded to each other. I have the brothers in the rugby series, [inaudible 00:55:18 / #]. I have the rock band and it's really, really rare for me to write books that are a couple in total isolation. I've realized I write community books, which is, there are links all over the place. People are connected. Probably one of the ones I've written where it is a very isolated story for the romance is Heart of Obsidian.

00:55:44 / #: Yeah. They are very much alone for a lot of their book, but the characters themselves are not alone. So Caleb, who is determined to walk alone and determined not to make any bonds, has somehow still managed to have two best friends.

Jennifer Prokop 00:55:59 / #: Him and his ravine.

Nalini Singh 00:56:01 / #: Him and his ravine. He just wants to be alone in there except for Zahara. And so I don't tend to write super isolated characters because I really love exploring all the bonds of relationships, the romance, of course, the love, but also, friendship, family, what does it mean? What does loyalty mean and what do people do for each other because of the love? Or not just even the positive emotions, but the negative ones as well. Because they're quite complex. People can make choices where you think that's a bad choice, but you can see why they made it. So I love all that stuff. I guess, how would you say it? All the rivers of the human heart. That's my core story is the community. Yeah.

Jennifer Prokop 00:57:03 / #: Well, to that end, what are the books that you hear the most from readers about? Is there a book that you just hear about all the time?

Nalini Singh 00:57:15 / #: Heart of Obsidian. Heart of Obsidian, yeah. It's from the Psy-Changeling series, and then from the Guild Hunter series, it's any of the Elena and Raphael books. Because I think with that series, it's unusual in the sense that it's a romance series, which is there together, but it's like an urban fantasy series, which is they keep coming back in the books. And so a lot of people, it's a long love story, and so people are excited to see them again, but of a single book that is probably Heart of Obsidian.

Jennifer Prokop 00:57:53 / #: I believe it. I feel like it's so hard when you are looking forward to a book for books and then to have it be even better than you thought it would be. Right.

Sarah MacLean 00:58:02 / #: What a gift.

Jennifer Prokop 00:58:03 / #: Yeah. Right? It's amazing. It's amazing. So Nalini, I know that this is an impossible question, right? Because we love all of our children equally, but is there a book that is really special to you for any reason? One that you're especially proud of or you had trouble leaving behind or whatever that means to you?

Nalini Singh 00:58:31 / #: So I think, okay, so I'm going to cheat and I'll say two because-

Jennifer Prokop 00:58:35 / #: Allowed. That's allowed.

Nalini Singh 00:58:37 / #: It's for very similar reasons. So Desert Warrior will always have a special place because it was my first published book. I have the poster on my wall, and I remember all the feelings of holding that book in my hand and feeling like, wow, I did it. This voice is out there in the world.

Jennifer Prokop 00:58:58 / #: Well, especially since you really walked the road for a long time for that.

Nalini Singh 00:59:04 / #: Yeah. I did it the hard way. And then for the same reason, Slave to Sensation, because Slave to Sensation really catapulted my career into just a whole different level. But I just remember writing that book just compulsively. The story was just in my head, and most of my first drafts are terrible. Nobody sees my first drafts, but this book, a lot of the first draft is in the book, the published book, because it was like the story had been growing and growing and growing in my head all these years, and then it was ready and I just had to type it out. Literally, that's all I did. I lived, breathed that book, and yeah, it is a seminal book in my career, and it is the place where people really heard my name.

01:00:02 / #: When it came out, a lot of people actually said, this is a debut, because they had never heard of me even though I had six other books. So it just is a whole... Yeah, those two books are really pivot points in my life, in my career. So yeah, they'll always have a special place. And the original purple cover of Place to Sensation just still makes my heart thud, because I remember looking at that cover, and I was in Japan at the time I was working in Japan, and the cover came through and I was like, oh... I had a quote by Christine Feehan on it.

Sarah MacLean 01:00:46 / #: Oh, which is so special.

Jennifer Prokop 01:00:47 / #: Oh, yeah.

Nalini Singh 01:00:49 / #: I know, I almost died when she gave me a quote because it was like, she read my book. I was just overwhelmed. And yeah, so two very special books. But it's true. We love all our books. I think every book is the favorite. That's why-

Jennifer Prokop 01:01:10 / #: Yeah, but there are some that are more special. They do feel special. Amazing. Well, thank you so much for being with us.

Sarah MacLean 01:01:21 / #: Yeah. This was a real joy. I'm so grateful.

Jennifer Prokop 01:01:24 / #: We're so grateful to have you.

Nalini Singh 01:01:26 / #: This is really fun. You two are so easy.

Sarah MacLean 01:01:31 / #: Thank you for your gorgeous books, and thank you for leaving such an indelible mark on the genre.

Nalini Singh 01:01:37 / #: Thank you. I'm still going. We'll see what's next.

Sarah MacLean 01:01:40 / #: Yes.

Jennifer Prokop 01:01:40 / #: Keep going.

Sarah MacLean 01:01:41 / #: Oh, no, absolutely.

Jennifer Prokop 01:01:41 / #: I think we are hungry for more, right? I open that newsletter every time it comes in, so, yeah. I'm here forever.

Nalini Singh 01:01:51 / #: Oh, yay. It makes me so happy.

Sarah MacLean 01:01:55 / #: She's great.

Jennifer Prokop 01:01:56 / #: She's great. I really was... The story about sending off manuscripts when she was a teenager is amazing.

Sarah MacLean 01:02:05 / #: What an amazing kid. She must have been. My God, when I was a teenager, I was no more prepared to do anything like that than I was to fly.

Jennifer Prokop 01:02:12 / #: I could barely write my college essays, everybody. So clearly that was not...

Sarah MacLean 01:02:15 / #: She's writing book after book after book, first of all, and a Broken Heart too.

Jennifer Prokop 01:02:24 / #: Honestly. Amazing.

Sarah MacLean 01:02:24 / #: The Greatest.

Jennifer Prokop 01:02:24 / #: The Greatest.

Sarah MacLean 01:02:26 / #: The Greatest.

Jennifer Prokop 01:02:26 / #: We're going to all be scouring KU for the next couple months, seeing if it'll pop up.

Sarah MacLean 01:02:31 / #: Yeah. No, but what a great story. Every single one of these authors has such a unique story, but it was really interesting to me because you caught it too, as she was talking about how being in New Zealand, she called the warehouse in New Zealand because what else do you do? And I was like, I think Mary Balogh told that same story.

Jennifer Prokop 01:02:54 / #: Yeah.

Sarah MacLean 01:02:56 / #: Mary Balogh also did not live in the United States, although I think at the time she lived in Saskatchewan. But it's just so interesting because you hear so many stories that is a real old-fashioned way of submitting a manuscript. Gone are the days when we wrapped up our paper and mailed it to God knows where in New York City.

Jennifer Prokop 01:03:25 / #: The thing that's amazing about it too is, her first book was published in 2003. We are not talking about that long ago. So it really is, when you think about it, when you live through a revolution, it just seems like that's how it happened, and it's no big deal. But when you think about the sea change in publishing. Like she said, there was no self-publishing. You had to go through a traditional publisher. There were only two places that would even consider you if you weren't in the US or the UK. It's almost impossible for us to imagine that now.

Sarah MacLean 01:04:02 / #: No, absolutely. Because now, the world is so small, but she kept... There were so many moments that felt that way to me when she talked about finding a community, which of course, at the time, in the early aughts, there wasn't a hugely vibrant online community of romance people that authors could go to and say, "How do I do this thing?" There was no place to ask questions. There was no hub. These women really were flying without a net.

Jennifer Prokop 01:04:32 / #: Yeah. The thing I kept thinking I should ask, and then she was just such an interesting speaker, I didn't really want to interrupt her necessarily in the things that she wanted to talk about, is, I do think one of the ways in which her books are singular is her ability to reboot a long series that is in progress. Right?

Sarah MacLean 01:04:57 / #: Well, she talked a little bit about that too, with Psy-Changeling and the way she thinks about it as seasons.

Jennifer Prokop 01:05:03 / #: Yes, right? Because many people have said you could start at Silver Silence, which is what I would assume would be the beginning of season two. And it's really interesting because I think that it's so smart for her to say, I took this vision from television seasons. Because if you are writing a long series, you have to provide those on ramps for people, right?

Sarah MacLean 01:05:27 / #: Well, there are movements. When we talked about IID in the first season of this podcast, we broke up the books in movements, and who knows whether or not Kresley Cole felt that those were the proper movements. But what I was getting at when I asked her could she speak a little more about characters and the way she thinks about prepping books or prepping a series for the long haul with characters. I think it's really interesting and it speaks to her obvious past with fantasy and sci-fi, that in her mind, it really is about the overarching world, that's whatever's happening outside of the characters themselves. Because you and I have talked about this so many times. We are obviously intimately familiar with a different paranormal series that is clearly moving toward a final book in the series that is a character book, not a plot.

Jennifer Prokop 01:06:29 / #: Right, not a plot. Yeah, exactly.

Sarah MacLean 01:06:32 / #: So I think it's a really interesting difference in the structure of the way you craft a series. I felt like this when we talked about Crest by Ice.

Jennifer Prokop 01:06:44 / #: Right.

Sarah MacLean 01:06:46 / #: The world building in Nalini Singh's books is just superior to most other paranormal romance series, I think. And that's not to diminish the world building of other series, but she's just superior.

Jennifer Prokop 01:07:02 / #: Yeah. Well, and I loved when she talked about essentially, I was going to do a little standalone and then then, oops, there are seven of them. What are you doing lady?

Sarah MacLean 01:07:14 / #: You grew up reading romance novels, you know the rules.

Jennifer Prokop 01:07:17 / #: You know how this works. Yeah. But I think the other thing that is also really interesting to me, and I think Nora Roberts is probably like this. I think Jane Anne Krentz is probably like this, is the people who are just, they're writing the books, but then there's all the other writing that they're doing. I think Christina of Christina Lauren is this, just writing all the time that writing is a reward. And I know for a lot of authors, writing really is work.

01:07:47 / #: And I think that the way that she has figured out a way to take those little vignettes and stories and just kernels of ideas and gift them to her readers is part of what makes, I think, it's just such a rich world. Yeah.

Sarah MacLean 01:08:06 / #: But don't you feel a little bit like this is particular to paranormal? You mentioned Christina, I think you mean Lauren from Christina and Lauren.

Jennifer Prokop 01:08:16 / #: I do mean Lauren. Yes. Sorry. I do mean Lauren.

Sarah MacLean 01:08:18 / #: So setting aside Lauren, who is a special case, I feel like every time we talk to a paranormal author-

Jennifer Prokop 01:08:27 / #: They're just always... Christine Feehan, certainly.

Sarah MacLean 01:08:29 / #: The world is enormous and expansive. And I'm always thinking about them. I think about J.R Ward saying, "I'm the scribe. They just tell me the story." And it sounds wacky when you think about it, when you're talking to one of these authors at a time. But now that we have the joy of the longevity of the series of the Trailblazers, I'm starting to really think like, oh no, this is like-

Jennifer Prokop 01:09:03 / #: Yeah.

Sarah MacLean 01:09:04 / #: This is paranormal.

Jennifer Prokop 01:09:07 / #: She mentioned Meljean Brook, who I have to say everybody, we talked about this when we did our Milla Vane episode, but Meljean Brooke is Milla Vane. And I want her to come on the podcast very badly so we can just grill her about Heart of Blood and Ashes. But also, that's another person who I think clearly is deeply invested in the world in a different way,

Sarah MacLean 01:09:31 / #: The world.

Jennifer Prokop 01:09:32 / #: Yeah.

Sarah MacLean 01:09:33 / #: And that's not to say that historical authors or contemporary authors aren't invested in the world, but its is different field. Or am I wrong?

Jennifer Prokop 01:09:42 / #: No, I think that's a really interesting observation. I think that there's just people who... I just was really fascinated by it. I really liked hearing her talk about how much joy she gets out of playing around in the parts of the world that are not going to be a whole book. But that doesn't mean-

Sarah MacLean 01:10:00 / #: Just writing a [inaudible 01:10:02 / #] and putting it out there. And there is a joy in receiving those as a reader when you're like... And I can understand her. I really appreciated her saying like, "Oh, I'm so glad. I'm so glad you enjoy them." Because I certainly have written a number of times, just a little tiny thing that's like, here's a little thing that the characters are still doing. And I think, is this navel-gazey? Is this just me satisfying my own desire to return to this world? Do readers really want this? So I don't know, that was very relatable content.

Jennifer Prokop 01:10:36 / #: Yeah. Well, and I think the other thing that is fascinating if you think about it is I don't think I'd put together the idea that the world is actually moving so slow. Right?

Sarah MacLean 01:10:48 / #: Oh, I know. I didn't realize that either.

Jennifer Prokop 01:10:50 / #: And I thought, that's wild.

Sarah MacLean 01:10:53 / #: So she has to put a character on ice for a while.

Jennifer Prokop 01:10:54 / #: Yeah, they're not ready. And I thought that was also really fascinating because of course, we're thinking in terms of it's been 20, however many books and she's like, it's been three years, everybody calmed down. Calm down.

Sarah MacLean 01:11:08 / #: I enjoyed hearing her talk about craft. I enjoyed hearing her talk about fan service and readers and talk about somebody who just obviously cares about the way the books are received. And of course, when we asked our question about how readers engage with the books, I loved that she was surprised too by this thing that I think we all, many of us were surprised by in the early aughts.

Jennifer Prokop 01:11:45 / #: I'm always really interested in the question about how readers respond in general. And we were looking at this before we started recording, right? Hunger Like No Other was the beginning of 2006. Slave to Sensation was the end of 2006. So it's like we saw the paranormal boom, just going and going.

Sarah MacLean 01:12:08 / #: The idea that by the end of 2006, Berkeley was like, "We're done with paranormal," and this was Kresley, J.R Ward, Nalini, there were so many huge series.

Jennifer Prokop 01:12:27 / #: And I'm sure they just thought that they were at capacity. How much of a market for this could there really be?

Sarah MacLean 01:12:36 / #: Well, and also, let's not forget, right? It's not quite the same as what's going on now in contemporary. Because when you acquire a paranormal series, you are acquiring a series. You're investing in however many of these books, obviously if it doesn't sell, you're not investing in that many. But the idea is this could become a thing. We could end up with two seasons, 20 books, however many things. Whereas right now, houses are buying one, maybe two books at a time.

Jennifer Prokop 01:13:13 / #: Right. Right. Right. So I think that part is really interesting. But I also found myself really thinking about what she said about starting in contemporary to get the romance beats down, but that her true love was always going to be in creating these big worlds, right?

Sarah MacLean 01:13:29 / #: Yeah. Obviously.

Jennifer Prokop 01:13:31 / #: I think that's obviously why I... And I think also though, I was really, look, when people talk about, she did not name names when she was talking about TV shows, that started with the great premise, but didn't have an ending in mind. But I always think of Lost. Right?

Sarah MacLean 01:13:45 / #: Lost.

Jennifer Prokop 01:13:45 / #: Exactly, I said it.

Sarah MacLean 01:13:46 / #: I was so mad.

Jennifer Prokop 01:13:47 / #: Right? And I just think it's a big reason I don't trust TV anymore, are shows like that. And so I think that to know that you're in... You know when you're reading one of Nalini's books, that you are in good hands.

Sarah MacLean 01:14:00 / #: It's tight. She knows exactly what she's doing.

Jennifer Prokop 01:14:04 / #: Yeah.

Sarah MacLean 01:14:04 / #: Yeah. And when I feel like there is a... Obviously, I want every book to feel that way, but that is a required quality for a paranormal. You have to know that it's going to hang together. My friend Carrie Ryan, who is a YA paranormal author or Y fantasy, she always used to say, the world building is where everybody gets caught up because you think to yourself, how does the magic work? What are the rules? And with Nalini, these characters, these identities have so many rules. Yeah.

Jennifer Prokop 01:14:48 / #: Well, and also she was like, listen, I don't have just one idea. I've got two. And they're in the place at the same time.

Sarah MacLean 01:14:55 / #: Yeah, exactly.

Jennifer Prokop 01:14:56 / #: And they've got this long history.

Sarah MacLean 01:14:58 / #: It's tremendous.

Jennifer Prokop 01:14:59 / #: Right? The books are amazing. And it didn't surprise me at all to hear her say that people, Heart of Obsidian is the book that really hits for people.

Sarah MacLean 01:15:08 / #: Well, because everyone was waiting for it.

Jennifer Prokop 01:15:09 / #: Yeah.

Sarah MacLean 01:15:10 / #: That's the [inaudible 01:15:11 / #].

Jennifer Prokop 01:15:12 / #: Right. Right. But sometimes that book doesn't deliver. But I think when it does, that's when you have people forever who are like, I can't wait to get to this book. And then it's so good.

Sarah MacLean 01:15:24 / #: Yeah. Absolutely. What I love is she was... I didn't know. I've never met Nalini. I had no idea. She was so young. And now I'm like, oh, great. We have decades more of Obsidians to come.

Jennifer Prokop 01:15:35 / #: Right? What a gift.

Sarah MacLean 01:15:36 / #: And I'm like right now thinking maybe I'll go reread that Rockstar series.

Jennifer Prokop 01:15:40 / #: Oh God, I love those books.

Sarah MacLean 01:15:42 / #: I know.

Jennifer Prokop 01:15:42 / #: I'm sorry, I had to ask about them. I really do.

Sarah MacLean 01:15:44 / #: No, of course. You asked about them. I wanted to know about them too. I'm particularly fond of the fact that you asked a reader fan.

Jennifer Prokop 01:15:52 / #: I know. Sorry. Well, this is everybody-

Sarah MacLean 01:15:55 / #: I'm afraid Poor Kelly is getting upset.

Jennifer Prokop 01:15:56 / #: My TFA friend, Kelly, I think she knew. I think she knew. She was like, I don't think anybody thinks it's really going to happen. But you know what? I wonder if her hearing the rationale-

Sarah MacLean 01:16:06 / #: She did give her a good reason.

Jennifer Prokop 01:16:09 / #: It was a good reason. It was a really good reason.

Sarah MacLean 01:16:11 / #: It's not like me when people ask me and I'm like, "No."

Jennifer Prokop 01:16:14 / #: You're just like, "No."

Sarah MacLean 01:16:14 / #: I don't want to do it.

Jennifer Prokop 01:16:17 / #: She's like, it's just not ready yet. She's still in the oven.

Sarah MacLean 01:16:19 / #: Maybe. Well, listen, Nalini Singh is going to be writing for another 20 years, everyone.

Jennifer Prokop 01:16:24 / #: So I think the thing about, like I said, I feel like there are authors who... She's just so good and every one of her books just sweeps you away, exactly. Right?

Sarah MacLean 01:16:37 / #: Yeah. And she seems to be able to do everything.

Jennifer Prokop 01:16:40 / #: Yeah.

Sarah MacLean 01:16:41 / #: Right?

Jennifer Prokop 01:16:42 / #: Right. Romance, thrillers, paranormal.

Sarah MacLean 01:16:45 / #: It's wild. I think some of us, we're just conditioned to do it more, better, different. And I think Nalini is one of them. She's one of those people who is just... We are lucky to be living at a time when she is writing.

Jennifer Prokop 01:17:05 / #: Absolutely.

Sarah MacLean 01:17:06 / #: Nalini's next book for everyone, it out in November. It is called, There Should Have Been Eight. And it is a thriller. Yeah.

Jennifer Prokop 01:17:17 / #: I haven't read her thrillers, so I haven't-

Sarah MacLean 01:17:18 / #: I haven't either.

Jennifer Prokop 01:17:19 / #: So this was going to be-

Sarah MacLean 01:17:19 / #: I'm going to go do that.

Jennifer Prokop 01:17:21 / #: I bet they're terrific.

Sarah MacLean 01:17:22 / #: Yeah. This one's set on a remote estate in the New Zealand Alps. And there are seven friends together. And it sounds like maybe there has at some point, been a murder. I love it. I love it. I'm into it.

Jennifer Prokop 01:17:42 / #: Her books are real comfort reads for me. I've reread Cross by Ice, which we read. I've read a couple times. I've read My favorite, I think it's Rock Hard. I can't, titles, a couple times. I love that book. What a delight.

Sarah MacLean 01:17:56 / #: Yeah. And those rugby books are great. Very fun. For those of you looking for just a great sports romance, she can do it all.

Jennifer Prokop 01:18:06 / #: Well, we are lucky to have her.

Sarah MacLean 01:18:09 / #: We are. We are.

Jennifer Prokop 01:18:10 / #: A treasure.

Sarah MacLean 01:18:11 / #: So, thank you so much to Nalini again for making time for us today. It was a real treat to have her. I am Sarah McLean. I'm here with my friend Jen Prokop. We are together, Fated Mates, and you can find us online at fatedmates.net on Twitter, at FatedMates, on Instagram at FatedMatesPod. And if you super-duper love hanging out with us and you just wish we were more in your ear holes, head over to Patreon and join our Patreon where you have access to our private Discord, where tons of Magnificent Firebirds discuss new episodes weekly and everything else, hourly, minutely, secondly, and you can find information on that at fatedmates.net/patreon. Thanks so much everyone.

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S06, trailblazers, guest host, full-length episode Jennifer Prokop S06, trailblazers, guest host, full-length episode Jennifer Prokop

S06.01: Trailblazer Jackie Collins

Season Six! How is this even possible!

Season One gave us a full lAD deep dive (if you’ve never read Kresley Cole’s Immortals After Dark, general existential malaise is a really good reason to start), and Season Two gave us The Books That Blooded Us, the books that made us the romance readers we are. Season Three was during a pandemic, and celebrated that thing we were all desperate for—joy. Season Four introduced the Trailblazer episodes, where we featured interviews with the people who have built the romance house over the last fifty years.

Season Five built on all of that, deep diving on books that are new and fabulous, old and transformative, and generally celebrating the vast and magnificent romance pool. Season six will do the same. We’ve got interstitials, trailblazers, read alongs and interviews planned, so head over to your favorite podcasting app and subscribe so you don’t miss a minute.

The season launches today with what we thing is an absolute banger—a trailblazer episode about Jackie Collins, legend, juggernaut, author and lady boss, who was gone too soon.

We’re so lucky to have had a chance to talk to Collins’s daughters, Rory Green and Tiffany Lerman, who were immensely generous with their time and storytelling, to talk about their mother’s life and work. We love this conversation, and are so grateful to Ms. Green and Ms. Lerman for their time.

Remember: Girls can do anything.

Our first read along of the season will be Laura Kinsale’s Flowers from the Storm, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or from your local indie.

If you want more Fated Mates in your life, you are welcome at our Patreon, which comes with an extremely busy and fun Discord community! Join other magnificent firebirds to hang out, talk romance, and be cool together in a private group full of excellent people. Learn more at patreon.com.

Show Notes

Jackie Collins died in 2015. You should watch the Netflix documentary Lady Boss for more about Jackie’s life, as well as her YouTube channel.

Chels wrote a great essay about the infamous interview between Barbara Cartland & Jackie Collins.

Authors and publishing professionals mentioned: Enid Blyton, Harold Robbins, Sidney Sheldon. Collins's editor was Suzanne Baboneau at Simon & Schuster.

 

Books Mentioned This Episode

Trailer: Lady Boss - The Jackie Collins Story Watch @ Netflix

Sponsors

Angelina M. Lopez, author of Full Moon Over Freedom,
available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, your local independent bookstore, or wherever you get your books

and

Max Monroe, author of Best Frenemies
available at Amazon, or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited

and

Pocket Books Book Shop
a queer, feminist, anti-racist indie bookshop
online and in Lancaster, PA
Shop online at pocketbooksshop.com

TRANSCRIPT

Jackie Collins 00:00:00 / #: It's only the people who have never read me, they'll say, "Oh, it's full of sex and lust, and it's just trash." When they read me and they haven't before, say somebody's come to interview me from a serious newspaper.

00:00:11 / #: They will go, "Well, I read the book and I wasn't looking forward to it. But really, it's so funny, it's witty and perceptive, and it's a good story, and I couldn't put it down."

00:00:20 / #: That kind of reaction is great. I don't care what they say about me, because I know that the people who are buying my books, understand what I do and enjoy what I do. To me, that means everything.

Sarah MacLean 00:00:31 / #: That was the voice of Jackie Collins. Juggernaut, is that how we describe her?

Jennifer Prokop 00:00:38 / #: Lady Boss.

Sarah MacLean 00:00:39 / #: Lady Boss and author of many terrific books, including Hollywood Wives, which has just celebrated its 40th anniversary with a brand-new edition.

00:00:51 / #: We were so lucky to be able to speak to Rory Green and Tiffany Lerman, Jackie's daughters, about their mom's legacy, about her books, about her writing, and about what it was like to live life with Jackie Collins.

Jennifer Prokop 00:01:10 / #: This is Fated Mates. I'm Jennifer Prokop, a romance reader and critic.

Sarah MacLean 00:01:14 / #: And I'm Sarah MacLean. I read romance novels and I write them.

Jennifer Prokop 00:01:18 / #: One thing we'll be talking about today, along with Jackie's legacy as an author and her life as a writer, is the Netflix documentary, Lady Boss, which tells the story of Jackie's life. After she died, Tiffany and Rory and Tracy found their mom's extensive diaries, letters and everything.

00:01:43 / #: It's a really terrific viewing experience. If you want to pause and go watch that and come back or listen in on the conversation, I think you'll be really inspired to watch it after. Without further ado, here's our conversation with Tiffany and Rory.

Sarah MacLean 00:02:03 / #: Welcome, Rory Greene and Tiffany Lerman, Jackie Collins' daughters. We are so excited to have you with us on Fated Mates. Thanks for joining us.

Tiffany Lerman 00:02:11 / #: Oh, thank you, Sarah and Jennifer. We're very excited to be here.

Rory Green 00:02:15 / #: Yes, thank you for having us.

Jennifer Prokop 00:02:17 / #: For our listeners, we really recommend that you watch the Netflix documentary about Jackie Collins called Lady Boss.

00:02:24 / #: Tiffany and Rory, can you tell us a little bit about before we start talking about your mom as a writer, how did that documentary come into being?

Tiffany Lerman 00:02:33 / #: Well, that's very interesting because she's been gone, gosh, almost eight years now, and it's been really hard for us. She left us with this incredible treasure trove of an archive.

00:02:47 / #: When Rory and I and our other sister, Tracy, were going through everything, she literally had kept every single piece of correspondence and just anything that she had received.

00:03:01 / #: It was this beautiful archive, and we all looked at each other and we just said, "A documentary needs to be made about her. There is so much life here, so much more that people don't know about her." It was so important for us to see if we could get this story made.

Rory Green 00:03:18 / #: This is Rory. One of the things that when the director came on for the documentary, she realized that there was a whole story that our mother, who was just naturally just a storyteller. That was her lifeline was telling stories, but that she'd never actually told her own story.

00:03:36 / #: I think that was also why the director was so inspired by the project, because she thought there's a much more complex story behind this woman than most people who knew of her or had heard of her would ever imagine. She really wanted to make a film that showed our mother as a dimensional person, and the extraordinary trajectory that got her to where she was.

Sarah MacLean 00:03:57 / #: Well, and I think that that's what's so fascinating about it. Obviously, we're a romance novel podcast, so many of the things that Jackie Collins was saying on tape in this documentary felt like things that we have heard before. We have been screaming for years as a genre. It felt like this wonderful experience of seeing somebody who just was such a huge legend, a huge force in publishing, saying it long before Jen and I have been saying it on the podcast.

00:04:34 / #: I wonder if we could start at the beginning with your mom? I know that you weren't there at the beginning, but I'm so happy to hear there was such a lush archive. One of the things that I really wish, and obviously this is because I'm a nerd and a writer, and I want to talk about books all the time. I wish there was a little more of is, could you paint a little picture of how books and your mother came to be? Because it feels like you don't tumble into being a writer of Jackie Collins' caliber.

Tiffany Lerman 00:05:06 / #: Yeah, that's true. Well, this is Tiffany. We knew that she loved books from a very early age. She read a lot when she was growing up. There's articles where she talks about that.

00:05:19 / #: But for us, the reason we knew that she loved reading so much, was that one of her favorite authors was an English author called Enid Blyton.

Sarah MacLean 00:05:27 / #: Of course.

Tiffany Lerman 00:05:28 / #: Yeah. One of her favorite books growing up that she read growing up, was The Magic Faraway Tree, and she read that to my sisters and I when we were growing up. We have these incredible memories of this specific book, The Magic Faraway Tree. We even read it to our children when they were growing up. I think it holds such importance in her life, because she loved the cast of characters that was part of this book.

00:05:58 / #: It goes into her writing with her cast of characters too, but there was always something happening that was always very exciting. They would go up into the top of the tree and they'd be in a different land. She used to read it to us, she used to do all the character voices too. It was really special because it holds such importance for us. We knew it was very important for her too.

00:06:23 / #: Enid Blyton was definitely one of the authors who influenced her growing up, but then there were others. I know Rory, you can speak about that.

Rory Green 00:06:30 / #: Well, yes. What was interesting is that she was always so character focused, and she would say that the characters wrote her rather than she writing the characters. I think that, as Tiff said, in the Enid Blyton book, there was a different character on every branch. Our mother wrote 31 novels, and one of her expertise was weaving all these different characters together.

00:06:54 / #: She was also good at just painting this brushstroke, like one brushstroke, and you got exactly who she was talking about. I think we know that when she was growing up, she was fascinated, she loved those magical fantasy books, but she also loved crime fiction. One of her favorite books of all time was The Great Gatsby. She loved The Godfather by Mario Puzo, which really influenced her work, particularly when she wrote her epic novel, Chances.

00:07:19 / #: She was very interested in male authors. Particularly, Enid Blyton was a female author, but most of her favorite authors were male, because there weren't that many female authors for her to refer to, which was interesting. She also loved Harold Robbins and Sydney Sheldon, who were her contemporaries at the time.

Jennifer Prokop 00:07:38 / #: I remember those names. I didn't read your mom's books, I was a little too young in the '80s, you know what I mean? But I definitely was super aware of Jackie Collins' books.

00:07:48 / #: They were glamorous in a way that Sidney Sheldon and Harold Robbins. It felt like this trifecta of these are glamorous writers, writing about glamorous people doing glamorous things.

Rory Green 00:07:59 / #: Yeah, exactly. But what she'd say about Harold Robbins was that she loved his books and she loved the plot line and she loved the characters. She's like, "But the women were always in the kitchen." The women were not at the forefront.

00:08:11 / #: They were not the ones who were being bold and brave, and making the strides and calling the shots. I think that she was so driven to write in a different kind of way, to write essentially at that time how she felt a man could write. She wanted to give herself full permission.

Sarah MacLean 00:08:25 / #: I love this because I feel like you just named all those authors, and I feel like it's so not a surprise, because every one of those authors is such a plot. They're such a story, a storyteller. That's the word that we kept coming back to in the documentary. You've said it already, and those books are big, exciting, interesting stories and so it doesn't surprise me that she was drawn to them.

00:08:52 / #: I wonder if you could talk about the writing piece, because we're obviously fascinated by that process here. Also, it feels like she lived this big, glamorous life. She was a voyeur of sorts in this Hollywood world, this glamorous world. Clearly, was going to parties and meeting people and having this elaborate life, but we know the truth here, which is the books don't write themselves.

00:09:22 / #: What was a day like for her? When did she write and how was writing for her? What was the experience of writing for her? Did she talk a lot about that with you? Were you able to intuit it? I will say my daughter likes to say, "No one knows how hard it is to be the child of an author."

Rory Green 00:09:38 / #: I love it.

Sarah MacLean 00:09:42 / #: If you'd like me to hook you up with her, to mentor her through this challenge.

Rory Green 00:09:47 / #: We'd be more than happy to.

Tiffany Lerman 00:09:47 / #: We can relate. We can relate on so many levels. In every house that we lived in, she always had her dedicated study and that was her workroom. If the study door was closed, you really couldn't or shouldn't go in, but it didn't stop us from going in. We would still always go in. But even from when we were very small, growing up in London, she had the study, but she was very disciplined because she was always there for us.

00:10:15 / #: She'd wake up, she'd make us breakfast, she'd take us to school, and then she would go home and she would write all day. She didn't usually break for lunch either. She would write all day and then she would get back in the car, pick us up from school, and then she was back on mom mode. Yeah, so she was very disciplined. Later on, when we were adults and not living in the house, she still had the beautiful study.

00:10:38 / #: This time it was a little bit bigger and more glamorous because she'd moved to Hollywood, and it was the same thing. If that door was closed, we knew that she was working, but sometimes we'd always go in. It was always fun because sometimes we'd go in and she'd be in the middle of a chapter or a middle of a sentence and she'd say, "Ah, perfect. Sit down. I need to read you this."

Jennifer Prokop 00:11:00 / #: Oh, I love it.

Tiffany Lerman 00:11:02 / #: If she could ever grab any of us, including the grandchildren too, she'd do it all. She'd say, "Sit down, I need to read you this." Then she would read an excerpt from the chapter that she was writing and she'd read in the character voices. I'm sure there's listeners who have listened to her books on tape.

00:11:20 / #: She would do her character voices really, really well. She'd really get into them. It's almost like it is like acting. We knew exactly what the character sounded like and it was very fun for us, because we'd get an idea of what she was working on, and she'd always love our input. What did you think?

Jennifer Prokop 00:11:40 / #: One of the things that was really striking about the documentary was her handwriting. They showed several times, it looked like she was writing it.

00:11:50 / #: Do you remember her writing in longhand or was she the type of person to keep notes places? Obviously, at some point she transitioned to more modern technology.

Rory Green 00:12:02 / #: No, she really never did. Jennifer, she never transitioned to more modern technology. She always wrote in her own handwriting. She had really beautiful script.

Jennifer Prokop 00:12:12 / #: She did.

Rory Green 00:12:13 / #: It's almost like for us, it's so evocative when we see our mother's handwriting, it's like hearing her voice because it was everywhere. Her handwriting was everywhere. She had certain notebooks that was only certain pens that she liked to use. She kept a little spiral notebook in her purse and her handbag. Whenever we went out, I remember going shopping for school uniforms or something.

00:12:35 / #: She'd be taking notes of dialogue of people that she'd be listening to while we're waiting to get our shoes fitted. She was always taking notes. Also, as you say, as a voyeur at parties, she was hiding in plain sight, right? She was but she was doing her research. She was always researching her characters. It was almost like method acting, as Tiff said.

00:12:58 / #: She did have a background in acting, but she brought that, I think, to her whole creative process. The other interesting thing about her space, we're so accustomed to that, to thinking about guys having a man cave, but our mother always had this dedicated space that was her working space. It was like her lady boss cave essentially. She always made sure that she had a space in the house, as Tiff said.

00:13:26 / #: What was so beautiful about it, was she had her desk and she had her chair. There was always a chair opposite her. As Tiff said, she'd welcome us in and we could sit and we could read. But when I remember my childhood, it's almost like what was special was that there was a chair on the other side of the desk, so that we could become part of that process alongside her. She was incredibly disciplined.

00:13:47 / #: She used to say she never got writer's block, but she did get getting to the desk block. Sometimes that was difficult. She marketed herself. She went through seasons. She always had her season of writing a book, would take about a year, maybe a year and a half. But then she had her publicity season and I think the film really delved into this, how she put on almost different personas for those different parts of her life and the different seasons in her life.

Tiffany Lerman 00:14:14 / #: Even up until she passed away, she had handwritten every single one of her books.

Sarah MacLean 00:14:19 / #: Amazing.

Tiffany Lerman 00:14:20 / #: She would sit and she would handwrite everything, so that's why she only released one book a year. There were other authors out there who were coming out with books every couple of months, and she just didn't want to change her process. That was her process. She would hand it over to an assistant who would then type it, and then she would go back to the typed, written manuscript and then she would make corrections.

00:14:41 / #: She had a really interesting and different process that I don't think a lot of authors have. I think everybody is on computers and doing it that way. Hers was just that because she used to say she didn't map out anything, she never wrote outlines. She said her characters would take her there, so she had to handwrite it because it was almost like they took over her whole persona as she was writing.

Jennifer Prokop 00:15:10 / #: This week's episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by Pocket Books Shop in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Sarah MacLean 00:15:16 / #: Pocket Books Shop is one of my favorite places in the universe. It's an anti-racist, feminist, queer, women-owned business in Lancaster, which is right now perfect for fall visit with pumpkin patches and rolling Golden Hills. It's amazing. It's exactly what you want in the fall. But Pocket has launched this very cool thing called Pocket Picks, and it is a monthly subscription exclusively available through them.

00:15:42 / #: The books are curated by the staff at Pocket. You fill out a questionnaire and tell them who and what you love to read. They send you every month, a handpicked book for you and your reading taste, including, Jen, this is amazing. An introductory letter explaining why they're so excited about the book.

Jennifer Prokop 00:16:02 / #: So cute.

Sarah MacLean 00:16:03 / #: A sealed letter for when you're finished containing their thoughts.

Jennifer Prokop 00:16:08 / #: A spoiler letter.

Sarah MacLean 00:16:09 / #: And analysis.

Jennifer Prokop 00:16:11 / #: I love it.

Sarah MacLean 00:16:11 / #: Signed copies when you can get them, letters from the author if you can get them, stickers, bookmarks, et cetera.

00:16:18 / #: If it's a new release during the first week of publication, you get 15% off. What is not to love about this?

Jennifer Prokop 00:16:26 / #: You're going to be there this weekend.

Sarah MacLean 00:16:28 / #: I am. If you're listening to this episode this week, September 13th, on the weekend, Joanna Shoop, Adriana Herrera and I are road tripping to Lancaster, to have a day of talking about romances and meeting romance readers, and hanging out at the bookstore.

00:16:44 / #: We are so excited. Tickets are still available. You can get them all at pocketbooksshop.com. That's books plural, pocketbooksshop.com, or as always, you can check links in show notes. We hope to see you there.

Jennifer Prokop 00:17:00 / #: Yeah. Thanks to Pocket Books Shop in Lancaster for being an awesome store and for sponsoring the episode.

Sarah MacLean 00:17:08 / #: Once the book is finished, did she have an editor who was a partner in this, or do you know about this part, I guess? Was there one? Were there more than one? That relationship is always interesting.

Rory Green 00:17:23 / #: It is, it's a fascinating relationship. There were always multiple editors. She also over the years, had multiple publishers, but to be perfectly honest, her first reader always was our father. Again, the Lady Boss: The Jackie Collins Story, tells the story of how our father was the one to encourage her. She'd always been writing.

00:17:43 / #: One of the things that we didn't mention but we were just completely delighted by, is that after she died when we were going through everything, we found these books that she had started to write when she was 13 years old. They were these things called teenagers, and then she had different installments. There was the French and the America.

00:18:07 / #: Our Aunt Joan did illustrations, which she would then cut out and paste into these books. They're these beautiful books, but the most amazing thing about them, was that there was Jackie Collins on the page at the age of 13. Her voice was right there. That was just astonishing to see at such an early age how she'd been developing that voice.

00:18:26 / #: But she didn't have the confidence when she was a young woman and finishing her novel. It was our father who just adored her and was really just a huge proponent of an advocate for her work, and he encouraged her. Throughout his lifetime, whenever she wrote a book, they were partners in that.

00:18:45 / #: He would be her first reader and he would make notes to begin with, and not extensive notes, because to be perfectly honest, she really didn't like anybody's notes.

Jennifer Prokop 00:18:54 / #: That seems fair. If your characters are speaking right to you, it does seem like a bit of an imposition to have someone else think they know better.

Rory Green 00:19:03 / #: Exactly. But he had some comments. Then she had an editor in London called Suzanne Baboneau at Simon & Schuster, who worked with our mother for many, many years, and they had a very close, connected relationship.

00:19:15 / #: Suzanne likes to say that she wished she could run a university called Jackie Collins, because she was so enamored by our mother's creative process. Again, she would give a few comments here and there, but there was very little editing that happened.

Sarah MacLean 00:19:31 / #: But this is so fascinating to me because one of the things that we hear so much, especially in genre fiction and romance especially, is that the books aren't art so much as they are just craft. They're a very nice chair, but you wouldn't hang them on your wall as a painting. I don't mean your mother's books. I mean all of the books in the romance genre and many books in genre in general.

00:19:57 / #: I wonder would your mother have agreed with that assessment that, "I'm a craftsman, not an artist"? Or what was her relationship to the actual creativity process? I know that obviously she put on a persona of Jackie Collins, but Jackie the writer, how did she feel about the work?

Tiffany Lerman 00:20:18 / #: It's going back to what we said at the beginning, she just felt she was a storyteller and she wanted to entertain her readers. I think that was the most important thing for her. She used to say, she'd turn on the television and see the news and see these awful things happening in the world.

00:20:34 / #: She just wanted to give this escapism to her reader, to take them to another level. To just let them not worry about all these terrible things that were happening in the world, and have this escapism moment where they could just enjoy themselves and go on this ride with her. That's what she used to say.

Rory Green 00:20:56 / #: I think it's fair to say that also that she had gone through a lot of terrible things in her life. She'd had a lot of trauma. Her creative sense was that it was her lifeline. I think that writing kept her alive, and that's why we hear from so many readers, and she did over the years. But in the years since she's died, we've heard from so many readers.

00:21:16 / #: Honestly, that's why we get so frustrated when people are so dismissive of our mother's work and say, "Oh, trashy beach read," because it kept her alive. I do believe that, but it also has been a lifeline for so many of her readers. We've heard from so many people who said, "I changed course of my life, or you gave me hope, or you helped me find the strength that I didn't know I had."

00:21:40 / #: I think that that really came through her work, because that was the same impact it was having on herself as the writer.

Sarah MacLean 00:21:48 / #: Right. Lucky was such an inspiration, I'm sure.

Tiffany Lerman 00:21:51 / #: Yeah. I say this in the documentary, I say, "We heard from so many people, they are in a bad situation." They say, "Well, what would Jackie Collins do? What would Lucky Santangelo do?" Channel the Lucky Santangelo energy but it's true. Because like Rory said, we have so many messages and we read them. We're like, "Oh my goodness."

00:22:15 / #: The way people describe how just reading this novel and making them feel empowered and making them feel confident, that they can make changes in their life, because of a character in a book or because of something that our mom said in an interview, it's really special.

Jennifer Prokop 00:22:31 / #: There's a lot of public ways in which her books, and even her as an author for bringing it, for writing this way, was really publicly pilloried.

00:22:42 / #: There's a really shocking scene where she has to sit there and let an audience full of people just tell her she's terrible.

Sarah MacLean 00:22:48 / #: Awful.

Jennifer Prokop 00:22:51 / #: And yet, when watching it and afterwards when Sarah and I talked, were sure that many, many more readers had the experience of like, "No, this changed my life." How did she balance?

00:23:04 / #: Did she ever talk about the public perception of her work versus the way that many other readers contacted her? Or was she just like, "This is what I have to put up with because it's the '80s"? I don't know.

Rory Green 00:23:20 / #: Yeah. I think in some ways, she understood that it was just what she had to endure, and she did endure it.

00:23:27 / #: She was very rebellious, our mother, but she was gracious with it.

Sarah MacLean 00:23:32 / #: She is immensely gracious in these interviews.

Rory Green 00:23:36 / #: Right. She was a gracious rebel, so she had to take a lot of shit. But you'll see on so many interviews, and so often, particularly in the '70s and '80s, she's being interviewed by men. They showed some of that in the documentary, and they are being so condescending and so disparaging. She was vilified for being provocative, because she was writing about predominantly men's objectification of women.

00:23:58 / #: She had been objectified as a young woman and continued to be objectified throughout her career, so she was always pushing back against that. I think she knew that would come with some pushback as well, but she was human and she was a sensitive person. She was a creative person, and a lot of creative people are highly sensitive. I think it definitely hurt her, but she was also incredibly resilient.

00:24:22 / #: She had just learned over the years how to bounce back or otherwise, she wouldn't have been able to continue in her career in the way that she did. Also, at the end of the day, as you said, she understood that in fact, that was only a small percentage, the critics, the haters who were lashing out. The majority, she adored her readers, and she was so open to connecting with them and hearing their comments.

00:24:44 / #: Tiff and I always say, "It's such a shame. She would love to be here now, particularly with the rise of all the ways that you can connect via social media." She was tweeting and getting really into Twitter and a little bit on Instagram, but there's so much more now that she would love to be engaged in, because she loved that relationship between her and her readership.

Sarah MacLean 00:25:04 / #: Did she have a group of other writer friends who were in the world with her, who she talked about writing with or who she interacted with?

Tiffany Lerman 00:25:18 / #: Well, she had her contemporaries like Danielle Steel and Judith Krantz. She wasn't in any writing groups or anything with them. She would see them socially, really only socially, and I don't know how much they talked about work, but I do know that they would mingle. They were at dinner parties together, and they definitely emailed. She was very supportive of other authors, especially female authors.

00:25:47 / #: She was always being sent new manuscripts and being asked, "Would you mind giving us a quote about this?" She would always give a lovely quote. She would always read them too. At book signings, lots of the questions from people and fans who would show up at book signings was, "How do I become an author?" She would love to tell people how to start.

00:26:12 / #: She used to say, she'd say, "Pick up a pen and write a chapter, or write a few sentences every day. At the end of the year, you'll have a book."

Sarah MacLean 00:26:24 / #: So simple, so easy.

Rory Green 00:26:28 / #: Exactly, I know. Yeah. But she was encouraging, but she also would laugh about it because she said she had so many people come up to her and say, "Oh, let me tell you about the book that I have in me. I want to write my story." She was like, "That's good. Thank you."

Sarah MacLean 00:26:41 / #: I have my own ideas. It's funny that way.

Jennifer Prokop 00:26:44 / #: One of the things that struck, I think both of us when we are watching is that in the new edition of Hollywood Wives, which is its 40th anniversary edition, Colleen Hoover writes the introduction. Colleen Hoover in a lot of ways shares a very similar, I actually wrote it down. There's a part in the documentary where it says she turned women who weren't readers into readers.

00:27:08 / #: I think Colleen Hoover has that same exact profile. We see many people who are like, "I didn't even know I liked reading until Colleen Hoover." I also think there's a way in which she was capturing something about the way in her time, about how women and girls interact with fiction, that does tell us women's stories and girls' stories are stupid or silly. She really taps into that, but she was such an astute business woman in that way.

00:27:39 / #: Was she aware at some point of, "I've harnessed something in the business of writing that no one else is really doing"?

Tiffany Lerman 00:27:49 / #: That's very interesting. Yeah, it's incredible the trajectory that Colleen Hoover has had. I mean it's unbelievable. I think she really would've enjoyed meeting with her and getting to know her now.

00:28:05 / #: But you're right, it's the same. She's given women and readers who never have read before, this opportunity to really enjoy reading when they've never had that inclination to pick up a book before.

Sarah MacLean 00:28:21 / #: Colleen says very clearly that women need to be stronger. Well, this is the quote from Jackie, "Women need to be stronger. Women have always been pushed into positions in the bedroom, the kitchen, the workforce. My books are successful because I'm turning the double standard on its head."

00:28:38 / #: Then Colleen says, "To say that she paved the way for writers like myself, is an understatement. Jackie Collins' daring, unapologetic stroke of the pen, combined with her glorious wit, has single-handedly given creative license to new generations of authors and storytellers."

00:28:53 / #: I think Colleen, it's fair to say she means women and other people who have not been heard over the years and have not been storytellers.

Rory Green 00:29:02 / #: Yes, I think that's absolutely true. I love that sense of giving voice to the voiceless. I think that's why, again, coming back around to the theme of her being a lifeline, I think that's the sense. Because so many people, when they open up the books, it's like they discover, they see themselves reflected.

00:29:21 / #: Or they get lost in this fantasy world and they see possibility. I think she did this beautiful balance of juggling what felt very real and then what felt very fantastical in a way. Because when people think of our mom, they think of, "Oh, it's just glamorous Hollywood." But she actually wrote a very diverse spectrum of characters.

Sarah MacLean 00:29:42 / #: This real sense of women, the heroines of her books being women who thrived, who could thrive. I was talking to somebody in publishing the other day about your mom. We were talking about how the business of publishing referred to your mom and Judith Krantz, and Barbara Taylor Bradford and Danielle Steel as sex and shopping books.

00:30:08 / #: That's how they called them in the back room when they were talking about them in marketing. That often she was mentioned in the same breath as Jacqueline Susann, who of course, was the generation before her. But in Jacqueline Susann's books, people die, the heroines die. In your mom's books, heroines thrive.

00:30:30 / #: Of course, the books are far more than sex and shopping, but publishing was all men at the time, everybody making decisions. There was also this sense of this was so new and such a fresh idea, that we might live this kind of life and also survive. It feels so simple, but transformative.

Rory Green 00:30:54 / #: She was allowing women to take control of their lives through her writing, and they hadn't had this expression or way of being able to do it before. She was allowing this confidence, building this confidence in her readers, and that's what they came away from reading the books with, "Wow, I can do that." That was her motto, "Girls can do anything."

00:31:16 / #: She really instilled that in my sisters and I, that girls can do anything, so we grew up thinking we could do anything basically. Realized there's a much harder world out there, but she raised three very confident young women, and as we grew up, we knew that. I think it relates to her readers too. They felt that they could gain this confidence after reading.

Jennifer Prokop 00:31:48 / #: This week's episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by Angelina M. Lopez, author of Full Moon Over Freedom.

Sarah MacLean 00:31:56 / #: Well, Jen, as you know, After Hours on Milagro Street, which is the first book in this series, was one of my very, very favorite books of the last year. Now Full Moon Over Freedom is the book that I have been waiting for. It's finally out, it was out earlier this month.

00:32:10 / #: I'm so excited to finally get to talk about it because, all right, our heroine, Gillian Armstead-Bancroft, was the perfect child. She was class valedictorian. She was like town darling. She was a perfect witch, a wife and a mother.

00:32:29 / #: Then she left Freedom, Kansas full of hopes and dreams and having been perfect in every way. Problem is sometime after leaving Freedom, she got cursed.

Jennifer Prokop 00:32:42 / #: Oh, no.

Sarah MacLean 00:32:44 / #: This is not a small curse. This is a pretty big curse. She's not able to do any magic at all. She's lost her whole magical life.

00:32:51 / #: In order to fix it, she has to go back to Freedom to work it all out. By working it all out, through the structure of the book, she has to do a bunch of bad stuff.

Jennifer Prokop 00:33:03 / #: Oh, boy.

Sarah MacLean 00:33:04 / #: One of the bad things she wants to do is just cut loose and have some no strings attached sex. Nicky Mendoza turns up and she thinks this is all great, because Nicky and she were together a long time ago.

00:33:19 / #: He was her first when they were younger, and now he's back for just one weekend. He is the ideal man to launch her down the path of ruination, except Nicky is also cursed. He was cursed from the moment they touched back in the day, when he was cursed to love her forever.

Jennifer Prokop 00:33:38 / #: The best kind of curse.

Sarah MacLean 00:33:40 / #: Stop it, stop it. It's so good.

Jennifer Prokop 00:33:44 / #: Yes, and we love Angelina here on the podcast, so please check out Full Moon Over Freedom. It is available in print, e-book and audio wherever books are sold.

00:33:55 / #: You can also subscribe to Angelina's monthly newsletter and get some fun, cool flashback chapters from Full Moon Over Freedom on her Patreon.

Sarah MacLean 00:34:05 / #: While you're at it, read After Hours on Milagro Street too.

Jennifer Prokop 00:34:08 / #: Yes. Thank you to Angelina M. Lopez for sponsoring this week's episode.

Sarah MacLean 00:34:15 / #: I have a question for you both. Were you, I guess, A, interested in reading your mom's books when you were children?

00:34:22 / #: Were you allowed to read your mom's books when you were children? Once you did, what did that feel like? What does that feel like now?

Tiffany Lerman 00:34:35 / #: Well, she asked us to wait until we were 18. She said, "Just wait until you're 18," so I did. I said, "Okay, I'm going to wait until I'm 18."

Jennifer Prokop 00:34:46 / #: You were the rule follower.

Tiffany Lerman 00:34:48 / #: Yes, yes. I don't know about my sisters. I remember we were living in Los Angeles at the time, but I'd gone back to London to visit family and relatives. I remember starting one of the books while I was in London and I didn't know what to expect. I myself, I'm like a hopeless romantic.

00:35:11 / #: I love good romantic stories, but I also love adventure and all of that, so it was right up my alley. I started reading it, took it on the plane with me, couldn't put it down. Came home, had jet lag, was up until two o'clock in the morning because I had to finish it.

Jennifer Prokop 00:35:29 / #: Listen, your mom loved this.

Tiffany Lerman 00:35:32 / #: Yeah. She was so thrilled.

Jennifer Prokop 00:35:33 / #: I'm sure she was.

Tiffany Lerman 00:35:34 / #: When I could finally start talking about it with her, she was so, so thrilled. An instant Jackie Collins' mega fan immediately. It was crazy. I was like, "What's happening next? When are you doing this?" Lucky was one of my all-time favorites. I like to say nobody really knows this, I like to say it though. At one point, she wanted to kill off Lennie.

00:36:00 / #: Lucky Santangelo was married, his second marriage was to Lennie Golden, and she really, really wanted to kill him off. I begged her, I said, "Please." I said, "I love them so much. They have such a great marriage. You cannot do this to me. You cannot do this to the fans."

Sarah MacLean 00:36:18 / #: That is some misery. That is serious misery choices.

Tiffany Lerman 00:36:23 / #: I know, I know. I said, "People are going to go crazy if you do that, you can't do it." She wasn't happy with me. She's like, "Okay." I can't remember which book it is, but it's the book when Lennie gets kidnapped.

00:36:33 / #: He's in the cave, he's held hostage in a cave, and that's when he was supposed to die but he didn't. She brought him back and I was like, "Thank goodness."

Sarah MacLean 00:36:44 / #: Yes, that's a great story. Good job.

Jennifer Prokop 00:36:47 / #: That's a great story. Gosh, imagine that's like, "My mom did that."

Sarah MacLean 00:36:52 / #: Well, but it makes sense. From a storyteller perspective, Lucky and Lennie were together for a long.

00:36:59 / #: That is a way that you could shake things up and force Lucky, Jen loves a heroine against the wall and who doesn't? But there it is, a dark moment for Lucky but Tiffany saved it.

Tiffany Lerman 00:37:16 / #: She wasn't happy with me, but I think she knew. I think she knew, that's why she did it.

Jennifer Prokop 00:37:20 / #: Yeah, you were right.

Tiffany Lerman 00:37:22 / #: Yeah.

Jennifer Prokop 00:37:24 / #: That's what happens when there's a seat on the other side of the desk. You get to have that influence.

Tiffany Lerman 00:37:28 / #: Exactly. That was one of my big moments. What about you, Rory?

Rory Green 00:37:32 / #: Well, it's interesting because Tiff and our mom, they were much more aligned in their personalities. We all had a great relationship with her, but I was this highly sensitive, kind of like a fragile child. There's always one in the family. I just feel like I was drawn, I was writing poetry and I was reading Judy Bloom. I had a sense of what mom was doing down the hallway, but I wasn't exactly sure what she was doing.

00:38:04 / #: I think she was quite protective of me particularly, because she knew that she had to hold things back. I also read her work when I was 18. I thought it was fun and fabulous, but it wasn't necessarily be what I would've been drawn to read at that time. It was interesting. We read every single book she ever wrote, of course. We were hugely supportive of her work.

00:38:33 / #: I'm also a writer, so we used to have conversations about writing, which was also really fun for me. But I know as a kid, like probably everybody else around me, was fully getting their sex education from my mother.

Jennifer Prokop 00:38:47 / #: Yeah, I'm sure.

Sarah MacLean 00:38:48 / #: Well, you were getting yours from Judy Bloom, like many other girls.

Rory Green 00:38:52 / #: Judy had my back covered. Yeah.

Jennifer Prokop 00:38:56 / #: Were there books that were favorites with readers? This is always really interesting. Lucky Santangelo, I think clearly.

00:39:04 / #: I heard that name and felt like I was like, "Oh, I remember this," or were there ones that were her favorite?

Tiffany Lerman 00:39:12 / #: Well, definitely Lucky. That's why she continued her in so many books, for sure, Lucky. But one book that really stands out that she loved was called American Star. It's like this epic love story, and it's a fan favorite as well, reader favorite as well. Actually, I need to reread that because I haven't read that in several years, and so I really want to go back to that.

00:39:37 / #: Then also Lovers and Gamblers, it happens to be one of my favorites, but it was also one of our mother's favorites. That was an earlier book, 1978. Yes, so it was before Chances and before Hollywood Wives. It was really when she started writing this epic genre where it took you all over the world and so many stories weaving into each other.

00:40:05 / #: We're so excited right now because it's being adapted to be made into a television show, a television miniseries. We know that she would be thrilled, so we're really excited about that. We can't wait for that to happen.

Jennifer Prokop 00:40:21 / #: Sure. Bring these characters to a new generation.

Tiffany Lerman 00:40:26 / #: Yes. Yes, exactly.

Jennifer Prokop 00:40:27 / #: I have a question that's also related, which is she recorded her own audiobooks, which audiobooks are so big now.

00:40:37 / #: They just say that this is a sector of publishing that is booming, but she didn't, as far as I can tell, record all of them.

Sarah MacLean 00:40:48 / #: Was there a reason behind the ones she chose?

Tiffany Lerman 00:40:51 / #: Yeah. To be honest, we don't actually know. I was shocked to discover that Hollywood Wives, that she hadn't recorded Hollywood Wives in audio. It has been recorded and it will be, and it's coming out in July for this 40th anniversary by a fantastic narrator called Emily Tremaine.

00:41:06 / #: But we were quite surprised, and we don't know why that particular one. It might've been a contractual thing, I'm not sure. We don't know why that didn't happen. The other audio that she did record, because of course, at the time she was recording when it was cassette tapes and then it was CDs.

Sarah MacLean 00:41:22 / #: Sure. You would get them in those weird cases.

Tiffany Lerman 00:41:29 / #: Exactly, like 25 tapes or 10 CDs. They often had to abridge the stories, which I'm sure didn't help. But it is super fun to be able to listen to the ones that she did record.

Sarah MacLean 00:41:41 / #: I'm sure.

Rory Green 00:41:41 / #: The other fantastic thing that's happening now is that our niece, India Thain, has been rerecording some of our mother's titles for Simon & Schuster in the UK. She actually did an audio of Lovers and Gamblers, and I believe Lucky was the other one that she did.

00:41:56 / #: It's just such a beautiful thing to see it come full circle because she was the first grandchild. She had a very clear [inaudible] with our mother, and she really had listened to also, as Tiff said, she'd been on the receiving end of hearing our mother read. That's a reflection, hearing her reread the stories now.

Sarah MacLean 00:42:14 / #: That's lovely. I guess that this leans into or leads into a conversation about Jackie Collins, the business woman, because the documentary is called Lady Boss. There's a book called Lady Boss, Lucky is a Lady Boss. Everybody's a Lady Boss in her books and I love it. I'm very much there for that core story, but I'm really fascinated particularly by women in this '70s and '80s in publishing, when publishing was so dominated by men.

00:42:47 / #: Having the really keen business acumen to hold control of their empires and run the show. I wonder if you could talk a little bit, was that intuitive for your mother? Was she always thinking about business as well? I know that she obviously had a business manager who was in the documentary, but it seemed very much like Jackie called the shots. What was the balance between Jackie the writer, and Jackie the business woman, and Jackie the brand? Were they all one thing?

Tiffany Lerman 00:43:25 / #: Well, she was a huge promoter of her books. She worked tirelessly to promote. What we have heard from so many people at the publishing houses, of how she would go out of her way to go in and meet everybody, even people with very small, not necessarily important jobs. She would go into every room, introduce herself, she would take photographs with them.

00:43:54 / #: She was always working and creating these connections at the publishing houses, but also in the bookstores too. She was constantly going in. Rory and I are doing an event at Book Soup in Los Angeles in July for the publication of Hollywood Wives, for the republication, for the new reissue. He was telling us a story how she was always in there saying, "Where are the new books? Where are you placing them?"

00:44:26 / #: But she had relationships with all of the booksellers across the country. She would always go in and either sign books or, "How are sales going? Do you have enough?" When we look back and we see email and correspondence between her and her publisher, she's asking all the important questions, "How many books are being sold? When are they going to be there?" She'd put us to work too.

00:44:48 / #: Whenever we were in a bookstore, we'd have to go and we'd have to look and see how many titles were there. If they were, take it out, put it up on a prominent place on a shelf, so that someone perusing would see, "Ah, Jackie Collins."

Rory Green 00:45:03 / #: But she did have an extraordinary attention to detail, and you can see that in her work. That, of course, spilled over into as you say, Jen, her business acumen. She would proudly say she didn't even finish high school. She didn't consider herself at all well-educated or intellectual in any way whatsoever, but she had this business savvy. It was definitely intuitive.

00:45:29 / #: It was definitely instinctual. She also had a steep learning curve. She learned on the job. She had a good partner in our father who also, again, was alongside her, but she would read every single contract. She'd be asking questions, she'd always stand up for herself. She always would hold her ground and ask for more. She was never in that situation where she was like, "Oh well, I'll just accept what they've given me," no.

00:45:55 / #: I think that she got some of the highest, particularly, certainly for a female author. I think in the '80s, she was awarded some of the highest advances ever in publishing. We have a letter from her agent at the time, Morton Janklow, who passed away recently. They had this longstanding, fascinating relationship where he wrote to her. I think it was the first deal for Hollywood Wives, in fact, and Hollywood Wives was her ninth book.

00:46:23 / #: She was not at the beginning of her career. She had been working her butt off to get to where she was with Hollywood Wives, and she got a million dollar advance, which was unheard of.

Sarah MacLean 00:46:31 / #: No, huge.

Rory Green 00:46:34 / #: It was unheard of. She was quite extraordinary in that she set the bar very high for herself and she kept pushing.

Jennifer Prokop 00:46:42 / #: She's so clearly a feminist. Was that tied into the way she thought of herself as a feminist, and also the way in which she taught you and your sisters all to think about yourselves as women in the world?

Tiffany Lerman 00:46:56 / #: Yeah, absolutely. Yes. Like I said, she taught us to be strong women, to make decisions, not based on being with a man. It was to think for ourselves. She always used to tell me growing up, "I think you should be a director. There's no female directors in the world."

00:47:15 / #: She was looking at that. She was such a trailblazer. She was so ahead of her time in that way of thinking. I think she hadn't liked what she'd seen growing up. She didn't like the chauvinistic tendencies that her father had, and she knew that she didn't want that for herself or for her daughters.

Sarah MacLean 00:47:37 / #: But simultaneously, what a gorgeous representation of how feminism can exist alongside partnership, which is really a big piece of your mother's life, personal life, and also her books.

00:47:51 / #: There is space to be a strong lady boss, feminist, and also have love and partnership, and support and be equal with that partner.

Rory Green 00:48:02 / #: Yes. She was just very focused on equality. That was incredibly important to her. She was so frustrated by the injustices that she saw, particularly around women and the way that women were demeaned or diminished.

00:48:16 / #: As you say, she was walking through these worlds that were just populated by men. She had continued to have a felt experience of that life and she did. She was hugely respected in the publishing industry, but I'm sure she still encountered sexism at every gate.

Jennifer Prokop 00:48:32 / #: Well, as you can see, the way that a lot of men seem to think they knew what she was doing or trying to do, or attempting to do or achieving.

00:48:42 / #: It's really watching that documentary, it was just really, it was bracing is sometimes the word. It was bracing.

Tiffany Lerman 00:48:48 / #: Yes. The other thing that we haven't actually mentioned is that she was, in terms of her writing sex, like putting sex on the page, she was defiant about that.

00:48:57 / #: She was not going to be shamed for that, because that was definitely where she saw the inequality. That men could write whatever sexual experiences they wanted, even from the point of view of the woman.

00:49:08 / #: Yes. That was something that she felt so strongly about, and she refused to be shamed. I never saw her feel any shame around that whatsoever. That, for me, was very inspiring.

Jennifer Prokop 00:49:19 / #: A queen.

Rory Green 00:49:20 / #: Also, exposing these men, these Hollywood types. She was exposing them, and she used to say people didn't believe what she was writing. She had to tone down the truth in order to put it in a book.

00:49:34 / #: But since she's been gone, since she died, the scandals that have come out that she literally wrote about. The sleazy producer, the sleazy politician, the corrupt TV producer.

00:49:48 / #: It's one after another scandal that she literally had to tone down in her books, because people wouldn't believe it.

Jennifer Prokop 00:49:56 / #: Yeah. I found myself really thinking that. That there's a way in which if you have any question about #MeToo being real for a long, long time, read Jackie Collins' books. There's no question that interest in power and money and the privilege.

00:50:14 / #: Especially, I find it very moving to think about taking on the industry that tells you how to see the world. Think about how it filters into we watch TV and movies, and that's how you see the world. To be a woman to say, "I'm going to tell you about that world in a different way." It's a visionary, it really is.

Rory Green 00:50:38 / #: Yeah, she was a visionary. Also, having reread Hollywood Wives, it had been many years since I had read it, but I was just so struck by that when I was reading. I was, "Oh my God, she had named all of it." It was again, right there in those chapters on the page, and she was very exposing. I think that's why at the time, it was quite shocking. Nobody had ever written a book like that, and she would say still that people would still come up.

00:51:07 / #: There was something, she was so interesting with it because she wasn't threatening with it. I do think she threatened men, but somehow I think she also used her own sexuality and her own power. Because she was a very beautiful woman, so she would still attract men, but she told these horrifying. My skin was crawling sometimes reading Hollywood Wives at some of these scenes. I knew they were true.

00:51:27 / #: I knew there were some things that she had experienced personally. She also had a fabulous sense of humor, our mom. A lot of people who have read her books don't know about that. At times, they're just hilarious, so she always had this balance.

Sarah MacLean 00:51:44 / #: This week's episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by Max Monroe, author of Best Frenemies.

Jennifer Prokop 00:51:51 / #: Katy Dayton is a hardworking teacher and it is spring break, and you know what? She is going to treat herself right. She books herself a vacation rental.

00:51:58 / #: She's going to go have a great time for the week. The last person she wants to get stuck with, especially is her arch-nemesis from work, Mack Houston.

Sarah MacLean 00:52:09 / #: Perfect.

Jennifer Prokop 00:52:10 / #: Yet, somehow this man has been accidentally booked into the same spot as her for the week.

Sarah MacLean 00:52:17 / #: No.

Jennifer Prokop 00:52:17 / #: Now they're going to have to figure it out, but this involves things like him accidentally seeing her naked.

Sarah MacLean 00:52:27 / #: Isn't that always the way?

Jennifer Prokop 00:52:29 / #: Of course. All she wanted was relaxation, wine and fun in the sun, and instead, she is probably going to go to jail after dealing with this man the way she wants to. Are they going to figure it out?

00:52:42 / #: Is this workplace romance going to be only be one week long, or are they going to take it back to their real world? This is the perfect kind of spicy, standalone romcom readers will love.

Sarah MacLean 00:52:56 / #: You can read Best Frenemies in print, e-book, audiobook, or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited. Thanks to Max Monroe for sponsoring this week's episode. I think that if we can talk a little bit about Hollywood Wives, because would we say this is the book that launched her into the stratosphere, the stratosphere of publishing it feels?

00:53:22 / #: I think we've touched on why it was so amazing for readers and why readers came to it. Obviously, there's all the things that come with a Jackie Collins' book. It's fun and it's lush, and it's lavish, and it's full of all these stories and people who we see and idolize. It brings them all down in a lot of ways to real life.

00:53:47 / #: But it also feels like normal people like me, would read this book and say, "Oh, wait, I know this guy. I don't know this guy at all. I've never been in Hollywood, but I do know a guy like that." I wonder was that a piece of its appeal, or why were we all so drawn to this book?

Tiffany Lerman 00:54:14 / #: I think she exposed Hollywood in the way it never had been exposed before. I think at the time she wrote it, it was the mid '80s, and movie stars were huge. Well, they always have been. I recently saw an interview with her where she said she was sitting at a lunch with a bunch of friends, and she looked around. It was one of those nice restaurants in Beverly Hills.

00:54:43 / #: She looked around and she saw woman after woman after woman with the same designer purse, designer outfit, nails, perfect hair. She'd say, "Perfect work on their face," or whatever it was. She said, "Who are all these women?" Then she said, "They are the Hollywood wives." She was fascinated by seeing all of them in this restaurant. That's how the impetus, the idea for Hollywood Wives came about.

00:55:08 / #: Because she felt like they were all of the women who were taking care of the men who were in the forefront of Hollywood. There were no producers, directors. The actors were either bimbettes, as they were called, or starlets or on the casting couch or all of that. She just wanted to bring it all to the forefront. From her own personal experiences, we're sure she had experienced a lot of this.

00:55:35 / #: It was very interesting to expose it, and I think that's why people just lapped it up, because they were. They would have these parties when the miniseries. The miniseries was one of the number one miniseries in the '80s, and they would have these watching parties because people would sit there and they'd want to guess who the actor was. There was never anyone specific.

00:55:56 / #: She would just take different characteristics of different actors, different stories that she'd heard from people, whispers here and there. She would make them into one general character and it was a guessing game. She loved to create this guessing game for her readers. I think that's why people just loved it, because it really exposed this other side of Hollywood that hadn't really been written about before.

Sarah MacLean 00:56:19 / #: Yeah.

Tiffany Lerman 00:56:20 / #: She had infiltrated it. She was an insider. Yeah. She did that very deftly because people would trust her. She used to, because we've been watching old interviews with her.

00:56:30 / #: There was one where she says, "Oh, I'm like a bartender and a psychiatrist. People are just drawn to me. They just come and sit themselves down and tell me everything." Meanwhile, she's surreptitiously taking notes under the table.

Sarah MacLean 00:56:44 / #: Yeah, knowing she's Jackie Collins.

Tiffany Lerman 00:56:46 / #: Exactly. That's kind of hiding in plain sight, but her personality was like that. She was such a warm and welcoming person, and people did feel incredibly comfortable with her, but I think that also comes across just her narrative voice. I think that's why readers feel so comfortable. As you said, Sarah, like, "Hey, I know that guy."

00:57:07 / #: Because again, she could just encapsulate a certain character on the page. Whether it was somebody in Hollywood or somebody that you are working with in your office, or a fool or whatever. It's like she was able to just in a short sentence really, they would just jump off the page and you knew exactly who she was talking about.

Sarah MacLean 00:57:28 / #: Right. The ultimate 1980s working girl fantasy is to see that guy taken down, right?

Tiffany Lerman 00:57:34 / #: Absolutely.

Sarah MacLean 00:57:35 / #: She showed us that.

Jennifer Prokop 00:57:37 / #: Everyone knew this was Joan Collins' sister, and that she had really experienced so many of the things that were in her books. It really feels to me like it was a double-edged sword for her too, because then the assumption was that anything she had written about she had experienced. She was never able to also just take credit for being an amazing writer of fiction.

00:58:02 / #: It was always just the assumption that somehow because she had been to Hollywood parties, that she was just reporting. I think that's another reason why I really respected in the documentary, especially seeing her defending her work as a storyteller. You can sit in a Hollywood party and you're not going to be able to tell the story the way Jackie Collins is.

Sarah MacLean 00:58:27 / #: Yeah. Yeah, that's so true. We often end these conversations asking writers to talk to us about what endures from their books, what the mark is that they've left on fiction.

00:58:43 / #: I feel like this is one of those questions that we're so happy we have you, because often writers, they don't think of it that way. But you all have thought about it this way, I think. What is the mark that your mom left on fiction?

Rory Green 00:59:01 / #: Oh, wow. That's a broad question. You go first. You go first.

Tiffany Lerman 00:59:06 / #: I'll go first. Yeah. What is the mark that she left on fiction? I want to say that it's like she was a door opener, that she was brave enough to open doors that were closed. We talk about the glass ceiling, but somehow I'm thinking about doors with our mother. That she kept opening doors. Even doors that seemed like they were locked, she was like, "I'm going to figure out how to pick this lock. I'm going to get in and I'm going to find my space in that room."

00:59:34 / #: I feel like that's part of her legacy for female authors who have come before her. That's something that Colleen really, as we said, really acknowledges in her forward. I think she was a door opener. She gave women permission to find their voice, to be bold, to be brave. To also not have to contort themselves into what they imagine other people expect for them to be or expect them to write. I think part of her legacy is that she offered people freedom, like creative freedom.

01:00:07 / #: I don't know if she would be able to name that herself if she was still here, because again, it was so intuitive to her. It was just what moved through her, but it's interesting being able to take a step back and think about it objectively. But I would say it was about permission, freedom and door opening.

Rory Green 01:00:24 / #: I agree. I completely agree with what you say. I also feel that she wrote stories that she really wanted to inspire women, and to make women see that there were other options available for them. That they could believe in themselves and believe in their own confidence. I think she used her writing to send a message to women that they could do anything that they put their mind to. That's why she wrote such strong female characters.

01:00:55 / #: That's why Lucky Santangelo is timeless. Look at James Bond. She used to say, "Why do you have to put an age on Lucky Santangelo when there's no age on James Bond? He's gone on for decades, so can Lucky Santangelo." Her message is timeless for her readers, that they really can believe in their own confidence because she did. She said she was a high school dropout and look at what she did. It's a really positive message that she sends.

Jennifer Prokop 01:01:27 / #: That's amazing. What a legacy for all of you.

Rory Green 01:01:30 / #: Yeah, we're so lucky. We miss her so much every day. It's such a loss not having her in our lives anymore, it really is.

01:01:38 / #: But her inspiration lives on and her legacy lives on. It's our mission to make her bigger than she ever was before, even bigger than she was. That's really our mission.

Sarah MacLean 01:01:48 / #: Yeah. Well, we are so happy to help do our part.

Rory Green 01:01:52 / #: Thank you.

Sarah MacLean 01:01:53 / #: After you've watched Lady Boss, if you like me, would then like to spend the next 48 hours of your life just watching interviews with Jackie Collins being amazing.

01:02:03 / #: You can do that on the Jackie Collins' YouTube channel where you are uploading, or I assume have uploaded and are continuing to upload, incredible interviews where Jackie is just being amazing.

Rory Green 01:02:19 / #: Yeah, they're brilliant. There's so many interviews and you go down this rabbit hole, you could sit for hours. I could be sitting all day watching these incredible interviews. Now what we've started to do with her social media, on her Instagram and her Facebook channels and TikTok as well.

01:02:33 / #: We've started to take these amazing snippets of parts of the interviews with these great soundbites, that I feel like they could go viral. There's definitely a soundbite in there that we've got that's going to go viral where she's saying everything that we spoke about.

Jennifer Prokop 01:02:48 / #: Yeah.

Tiffany Lerman 01:02:50 / #: It's super fun for us to be now running the social media channels because we get to still interact with fans, or at least see comments every single day about the impact that she's had. If we ever ask questions like, "Tell us how Jackie Collins changed your life," it's so fun reading the stories.

01:03:07 / #: For us, like this September, she will have been gone eight years, but her energetic presence still feels very vivid because we get to continue her work and work with the estate and the social media, and it's a joy for us.

Sarah MacLean 01:03:24 / #: Well, we'll put links to all of the social media accounts in show notes so our listeners can find them easily. The book is Hollywood Wives. The 40th anniversary edition comes out July 11th in the United States, and I assume all over, but we are so excited.

01:03:42 / #: It is such a romp. I had the best time reading it. Thank you to Rory Green and Tiffany Lerman for joining us today. We are so thrilled to add your mother to the Trailblazer Series. It's beyond exciting for us.

Tiffany Lerman 01:04:00 / #: Thank you so much for the conversation.

Rory Green 01:04:02 / #: Thank you.

Sarah MacLean 01:04:04 / #: That might be my favorite Trailblazer episode so far.

Jennifer Prokop 01:04:09 / #: What's interesting is, and you and I have talked extensively about, we were reading when Jackie Collins was writing books, right?

Sarah MacLean 01:04:18 / #: Yeah.

Jennifer Prokop 01:04:18 / #: One of the things though is I was very aware of Jackie Collins when I was a teenager, but I didn't really read a lot of Jackie Collins' books. I don't think.

01:04:29 / #: I knew that they were romance adjacent, not necessarily like mainstream romance. I was so inspired by that conversation, all I want to do now is go read every Jackie Collins' book.

Sarah MacLean 01:04:44 / #: I definitely read at least one Lucky Santangelo book, and I remember Lucky Santangelo. I remember the miniseries. I remember my mom, my parents watching that.

01:05:00 / #: I was clearly too young to be watching those, but I was also too young to watch The Thorn Birds and those two are somehow interconnected in my mind as viewing experiences from my childhood.

Jennifer Prokop 01:05:14 / #: Watching the documentary, it felt like I was very aware of Jackie Collins as a superstar.

Sarah MacLean 01:05:21 / #: Like a personality.

Jennifer Prokop 01:05:23 / #: Yes. I think part of it is there was less channels. The part where she was on with God, who was that guy who did all the interviews with the glasses? I think watching those, like those were shows I watched.

01:05:41 / #: So Dynasty and Joan Collins, all of that was a big part of the ether of that time period. Watching her, I was like, "Oh yeah, I remember seeing this woman. I remember her whole vibe."

Sarah MacLean 01:05:57 / #: Of course, as a romance writer and as a romance person, you stumble across that Barbara Cartland, Jackie Collins' interview periodically. Over the course of the last of my career, I've seen that a few times.

01:06:09 / #: It's so horrifying that someone who arguably was so committed to stories of manners in Barbara Cartland, that clown, would come onto a stage, sit next to someone on a couch, and then just shred them. Jackie comes off as so graceful and gracious, and intelligent.

Jennifer Prokop 01:06:38 / #: Yeah, she's not backing down.

Sarah MacLean 01:06:40 / #: Just brilliant. There's no question who wins that, even though Barbara Cartland, if you watch the whole video, we'll put it in show notes, the whole video. Barbara Cartland just talks over her the whole time, it's gross. But Jackie comes off looking amazing, as she always does.

01:06:57 / #: She's so good at the job at taking the questions that we've all fielded over the years. The comments that we've all fielded over the years, and just making people seem small without making, I think, them feel small, which is hard.

Jennifer Prokop 01:07:15 / #: Yes, what a trick.

Sarah MacLean 01:07:16 / #: Impossible to do. Listen, I said this at the end of the interview with Rory and Tiffany, but do not miss the YouTube channel where they have curated all of these interviews.

01:07:33 / #: And where we got the clip from Jackie for the beginning of the show. I'm so glad we got to talk about writing.

Jennifer Prokop 01:07:41 / #: Yes. That was the one part of the documentary, the documentary is about her life and her influence. Of course, it's a lot easier to show that with the footage at hand, but we were really interested in hearing about her life as a writer. Sarah and I had a big list of questions.

01:08:02 / #: We are going into it thinking like, "We're not sure that anyone could answer these questions for someone else." But I was so thrilled, they love their mom as their mom, but they are so respectful of her work. I thought that that really came through and it really impressed me so profoundly. I don't know, I was really moved by that episode in just that conversation.

Sarah MacLean 01:08:27 / #: Yeah. Because there was a real sense, and I think this is something that you find when you think about authors like her, who are personalities. It's hard to imagine them in yoga pants unwashed on deadline, because it seems like Jackie Collins never ever was writing without a full face of makeup, but I'm sure that's not the case.

01:08:54 / #: I was really thrilled to hear about not just process, but her clear dedication to craft. I loved even the little moments where there's just a heartbeat of a moment in our interview where I think Tiffany says, "Oh yeah, she emailed back and forth." Or emailed, "She corresponded with Danielle Steel. She corresponded with Judith Krantz."

01:09:20 / #: It makes sense that those names, that those people would find each other in some way, because who else but Danielle Steel could possibly understand what it was to be Jackie Collins?

Jennifer Prokop 01:09:32 / #: When we talk about to authors about their early life as a writer or a reader, imagine coming across the treasure trove that must be all of your mom's letters and diaries.

Sarah MacLean 01:09:45 / #: Incredible.

Jennifer Prokop 01:09:47 / #: The fact that she wrote in longhand, I thought that was like a throwaway question. Then they were like, "Oh, no, no, that's actually what happened."

Sarah MacLean 01:09:53 / #: She literally never used a typewriter, which is amazing.

Jennifer Prokop 01:09:57 / #: Lady Boss, that's all I have to say about that. I just think there's some people for whom writing, it's about storytelling, and I think the Netflix documentary says that over and over again. I feel like there's a pathway to coming to writing that's not about like, "I love books, but I love stories."

01:10:20 / #: It was really fascinating to hear about her life, her writing process, and the way that she worked and the way they perceived that as children. But the story about her reading to them and there was always a chair across the other side of the desk. That was amazing.

Sarah MacLean 01:10:38 / #: I'm literally going to put a chair in my office so that when my daughter comes in, I can say, "Sit, sit here." It was a wonderful experience listening and watching. You all, of course, will have just heard the conversation, but it's clear how much these women just loved their mom and were committed to her legacy in a really interesting, powerful way.

01:11:11 / #: Also, I think it's so amazing how the books spoke so much to readers, and being able to hear Rory and Tiffany talk about how readers come to the genre or came to her books, especially at this moment in time. You said this related to Colleen, Colleen Hoover, who wrote the introduction to Hollywood Wives, the 40th anniversary edition. But this real sense of readers coming to these stories for the first time and finding joy.

Jennifer Prokop 01:11:52 / #: Something they didn't know they wanted in these books.

Sarah MacLean 01:11:55 / #: I think you can't, as much as we all, I think Jackie Collins lives as this huge, huge overarching personality for so many of us. But I just want to call out 500 million copies of her books have been sold, 40 countries, 32 New York Times bestsellers. I'm reading from the press release from Gallery, the publishers of Hollywood Wives.

01:12:24 / #: She was awarded an Order of the British Empire by the Queen of England in 2013 for her services to literature and charity. When accepting the honor, she said to the queen, "Not bad for a school dropout." A revelation capturing her belief that both passion and determination can lead to big dreams coming true/.

Jennifer Prokop 01:12:45 / #: Amazing.

Sarah MacLean 01:12:46 / #: I really couldn't say it any better. It feels like these women that she wrote were so aspirational for so many people.

01:12:55 / #: There was something really powerful about being able to tell a story about somebody who, no matter how down on their luck they got, was definitely going to become a lady boss.

Jennifer Prokop 01:13:06 / #: Yeah. Well, and I think the other thing that struck me was, especially again, in watching the documentary, is how many of the things that romance readers are still hearing today. It seems times have changed. Then you go back and you're like, "Nope, same old."

01:13:29 / #: The way that makes me feel is, for me personally, is I don't apologize for it. But that scene where an audience full of... In the Netflix documentary, there's a scene where she's on a talk show and people in the audience just stand up and essentially pin a scarlet A to her, person after person, after person.

Sarah MacLean 01:13:52 / #: If you haven't seen the documentary, watching it it's a shock to see. I watched it with Eric, and Eric turned to me and said, "If you had told me about this scene, I wouldn't have believed you, that it was as bad as you said."

01:14:07 / #: Still, just she took one. Listen, Jackie Collins walked so the rest of us could run on that front.

Jennifer Prokop 01:14:14 / #: Right. I think that that was the part that was very, I don't know. I think it's funny.

01:14:21 / #: I think that sometimes there's a conversation about the cultural way in which romance readers are always in a defensive crouch. I feel like I'd be like, "See exhibit A, B, C, D, E."

Sarah MacLean 01:14:37 / #: If you think about it, Jackie Collins, Danielle Steel, Colleen, Emily Henry, we are seeing it even today, the big giants of whatever the year is, whoever the giant is that year, having to defend. But I do want to say the other thing that really was interesting to me, is I've been thinking over the last couple of weeks since we knew we were going to interview them.

01:15:08 / #: I've been thinking a lot about how we don't talk about Jackie Collins' book as romances, and I don't think they are romances. That's not what they're trying to do. That's not the story or the fantasy that they're selling. They're selling a very different kind of fantasy than romance does, but it sure feels like they're cousins.

Jennifer Prokop 01:15:30 / #: Yes, absolutely. Well, and I think it's interesting. I found myself thinking so much about books that were written contemporaneously with Hollywood Wives or in the wake of Hollywood Wives, I would say.

Sarah MacLean 01:15:46 / #: Especially categories.

Jennifer Prokop 01:15:47 / #: Yes. That's what I was thinking. I bet that the categories I was reading in 1984 and 1985 about sexual harassment at work, were directly influenced by Jackie Collins.

01:16:07 / #: There's a way in which the things that are happening in the culture always, always trickle into romance. It was really interesting to think, "Oh, I hadn't realized that this was an influence, until we talked to them and heard about it." Then I was like, "Oh, of course."

Sarah MacLean 01:16:28 / #: Right.

Jennifer Prokop 01:16:28 / #: Of course, because here is someone who's opening the doors, as Rory said at the end. Opening the doors to here's a new conversation we get to have about what it is like for women at work.

01:16:40 / #: Of course, then once you open the doors, romance is like, "Ooh, there's an open door. Let me step through. Let me see what I can do in that space."

Sarah MacLean 01:16:48 / #: It's hard to imagine. You think about say, Judith McNaught's Perfect, or a number of Sandra Brown books during that time, where they walk right up to the wealth line to these jobs that glitter. It's hard to imagine that they weren't also aware of the dialogue with these books that, as I said my editor told me, were called the sex and shopping books on the other side by the men in sales and marketing.

01:17:29 / #: They weren't, again, not romance, but definitely the wealth piece, the fascination with extremely wealthy, powerful men in those categories and single-title contemporaries of a particular, it's a particular voice that you can see it through line in romance. It had to have been the influence of Collins and Steel, and Krantz and Barbara Taylor Bradford.

Jennifer Prokop 01:17:56 / #: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. We continue to talk about how every single trailblazer is a gift. This one was so different, but you know what? It was just really fascinating to think about what was the landscape out there.

01:18:12 / #: For sure, it is a fact, I think to say, that many a romance author probably looked at Jackie Collins for the model of, "Here's how I am going to move through the world with these questions. Here's how I am going to talk about my work to a hostile and patriarchal audience. Here's how I am going to ignore them and focus on my readers." It was inspiring.

Sarah MacLean 01:18:44 / #: Yeah. We didn't talk with Rory and Tiffany very much about the armor of Jackie Collins, but one of the things that I was really drawn to was this idea that she put on Jackie. Obviously, her sister was Joan Collins. She basically grew up in Hollywood. Once she was, what, 16, when she came to Hollywood to be with her older sister.

01:19:12 / #: Obviously, she comes by a lot of this glitz and glamour naturally. But the idea of nobody wore leopard print until Jackie Collins started putting on leopard print every time, because she had this affinity with the leopard or the panther or whatever. She has them all, there's this great photograph in the documentary. Maybe we can find it to share here.

Jennifer Prokop 01:19:34 / #: But look down, you'll see it.

Sarah MacLean 01:19:36 / #: With her just surrounded by cheetahs and birds and it's fantastic. I just think this idea of dawning armor to face the world when this is the work that you're doing. When you are constantly shining a light on misogyny and the double standard, and the way women are treated and the way power is passed on from person to person in these places. I think the armor is there because she was literally going to war every time she sat down.

01:20:13 / #: She didn't know what Merv Griffin was going to ask her or what Oprah was going to ask her. When you look at all these interviews, there's always the same. It always dances up to the, "Well, the scenes are so sexy and how do you do it? Who are these salacious people? Can you name names and what did happen with Marlon Brando?" I imagine to field those questions, which are so critical to your brand, and your readers are asking them.

01:20:43 / #: Also, hold to your firm belief that you're doing a thing and that you're a kick-ass writer, as she described herself.

Jennifer Prokop 01:20:52 / #: Right. Absolutely.

Sarah MacLean 01:20:54 / #: You got to put on the leopard print to do it.

Jennifer Prokop 01:20:57 / #: Sure. I think the other thing I was really struck by is outside of Oprah, it was so many men. It was Larry King. I finally remembered his name.

Sarah MacLean 01:21:06 / #: Larry King, that's right. Yep.

Jennifer Prokop 01:21:07 / #: I was like, "You know, the glasses?" That it was so many men. You know what, though? I think often about when Stacey Abrams went on the Stephen Colbert show.

Sarah MacLean 01:21:19 / #: Stephen Colbert, and he made her read or was going to.

Jennifer Prokop 01:21:23 / #: Yeah. This men calling women to task in this way, it has not changed.

01:21:34 / #: I think I cannot say enough about how if you've not watched this documentary, you should. It is terrific.

Sarah MacLean 01:21:44 / #: Yeah. I'm now a Jackie Collins evangelist. After I watched it, I then spent 48 hours just with that YouTube channel autoplaying in the background, because she's amazing.

Jennifer Prokop 01:21:54 / #: Yeah.

Sarah MacLean 01:21:56 / #: Yeah. That was the first trailblazer we've done with somebody who knew a person, because of course, tragically she passed away six years ago.

01:22:10 / #: But it opened up a whole new world for me in terms of like, "Well, who else could we talk to who would be able to speak like this?"

Jennifer Prokop 01:22:22 / #: About their person.

Sarah MacLean 01:22:24 / #: About their person, yeah. What a joy, was a real joy.

Jennifer Prokop 01:22:31 / #: We hope you enjoyed it. We hope you are going to read some Jackie Collins' books and mainline the '80s, and get out there and watch that documentary.

Sarah MacLean 01:22:41 / #: Yeah, put on your shoulder pads. Don't take any shit.

Jennifer Prokop 01:22:45 / #: Don't take any shit from anybody anymore.

Sarah MacLean 01:22:46 / #: What would Lucky Santangelo do?

Jennifer Prokop 01:22:49 / #: Kick your ass, that's what she'd do. Find her happily ever after.

Sarah MacLean 01:22:52 / #: Oh, and how about that story from Tiffany about how she was like, "You cannot kill Lennie."

Jennifer Prokop 01:22:57 / #: Oh yeah, talk about someone who understands the importance of the HEA.

Sarah MacLean 01:23:04 / #: Tiffany, there's a whole world of romance novels waiting for you when you're ready.

Jennifer Prokop 01:23:07 / #: I loved it. I loved the entire thing. It was terrific.

Sarah MacLean 01:23:12 / #: Don't forget to check show notes for all of the information that we talked about just now. Head over and watch Lady Boss. It's on Netflix right now. Pick up Hollywood Wives, which is really deliciously fun.

01:23:30 / #: Yeah. Just ask yourself every day, all day long, "Well, what would Jackie Collins do right now?" That's my new mantra, a different kind of JC.

Jennifer Prokop 01:23:44 / #: I don't know how else to end but there, everybody. Thanks for listening. You can check us out at fatedmates.net.

01:23:51 / #: You can join our Patreon to discuss this and other things with our listeners and with us.

Sarah MacLean 01:23:57 / #: Find out more at fatedmates.net/patreon.

Jennifer Prokop 01:24:01 / #: Thank you, Sarah, for that save. You can also find us on Instagram @fatedmatespod, and on Twitter, if it still exists, @FatedMates.

Sarah MacLean 01:24:09 / #: Welcome to season six, everybody. We're starting with a bang.

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S05.42: The Bride by Julie Garwood: A Primordial RomCom

We were devastated to learn of the passing of Julie Garwood, honest to God romance doyenne, last month. Garwood installed many of our buttons, and the buttons of so many romance readers who came up reading “The Four J’s,” and, more importantly, paved the way for romcoms with her wonderfully funny historicals. She was, without question, a trailblazer. While we were unable to interview her for our trailblazer series, we couldn’t let her passing go without an episode, so please enjoy our read along of The Bride, which is a nearly perfect book even now, decades after she wrote it.

While our thoughts are with with Julie Garwood’s family, her friends, and the legions of readers she delighted over her long and legendary career, our endless gratitude is with Julie Garwood herself—for the laughter, the sighs, and the absolute bangers that were her books.

If you want more Fated Mates in your life, you are welcome at our Patreon, which comes with an extremely busy and fun Discord community! Join other magnificent firebirds to hang out, talk romance, and be cool together in a private group full of excellent people. Learn more at patreon.com.

Notes

Books Mentioned This Episode

Sponsors

Trilina Pucci, author of Knot So Lucky,
available now from Amazon, or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited

and

Jessica Martin, author of The Dane of My Existence,
available now in print, ebook and audio from
Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo,
or from your local independent bookseller.

and

The Smut Lovers Conference,
September 21-24 in Orlando, FL
Use the code FATEDMATES for 15% off all available tickets

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S05.39: Trailblazer Mary Balogh

The Trailblazers conversations continue this week with historical romance juggernaut Mary Balogh, whose decades-long career has shaped the Regency romance in both category and single title. We talk about historical accuracy, about research, about love, about staying true to your voice and your purpose, and about who Mary Balogh thinks is writing at the top of the game (spoiler: we agree).

We are so grateful to Mary Balogh for making time for us, and for her beautiful books.

If you want more Fated Mates in your life, you are welcome at our Patreon, which comes with an extremely busy and fun Discord community! Join other magnificent firebirds to hang out, talk romance, and be cool together in a private group full of excellent people. Learn more at patreon.com.

Notes

Books Mentioned This Episode

Sponsors

Megan Frampton, author of His Study in Scandal,
available now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo
and your local independent bookseller.

and

Stephanie Rose, author of The Marriage Solution,
available now from Amazon, or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.

Read More
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S05.35: Trailblazer Loretta Chase

The Trailblazers conversations continue this week with the brilliantly talented Loretta Chase, who we adore, and not only because she wrote one of our favorite romances of all time. We obviously talk about Lord of Scoundrels and Jessica and Dain, but we also talk about writing, about the challenges of writer’s block, about the glorious rabbit holes of research, and yes…we ask hard hitting questions about The Mummy. We are so grateful to Loretta for making time for us, and for writing such glorious books.

If you are in New England, you can meet Loretta and Sarah at the Ashland Public Library Romance Festival this Saturday, May 20th in Ashland, MA. Attendance is free! Learn more and register at Eventbrite.

We have a Patreon now, and it comes with an extremely busy and fun Discord community! Join other magnificent firebirds to hang out, talk romance, and be cool together in a private group full of excellent people. Learn more at patreon.com.

Show Notes

 

Books Mentioned This Episode

Sponsors

Desirée Niccoli, author of Called to the Deep and Song of Lorelei,
both available for $0.99 this week in celebration of MerMay

and

Avery Maxwell, author of Your Last First Kiss,
available now from Amazon, or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.

TRANSCRIPT

Loretta Chase 00:00:00 / #: The main thing about that book was that it was in me. I did not have to find it. It was there and it was demanding to be written. The characters were in my mind very clearly from the beginning, and that never happens. I'm always struggling. I'm always fumbling. It takes me a while to get to know who they are and what do they want and what's the goal, et cetera, et cetera. In this case, it was all very clear to me. The main thing I saw in the beginning was this child who had had this horrible, horrible childhood, badly traumatized, that turned him into this person who's a sort of monstrous. And I thought, what do you do for this person, or what's needed here for some kind of a balance?

00:01:02 / #: And the heroine was there instantly. It was like, okay, she's someone who just gets it. She gets the thinking, she gets the guy thinking, she gets whatever it is. And why is she that way? Because she grew up with boys all the time, and she's just smart and paying attention. I needed someone who could see through him, and Jessica just came to my mind. So they really formed in themselves on the stage, and the rest of it, the rest of that book, I know it sounds mystical and it's like writers shouldn't wait for this to happen because it doesn't usually, but it just wrote itself. It was like a movie and all I had to do was write it.

Sarah MacLean 00:01:47 / #: That was the voice of Loretta Chase, author of Regency Romances single title Historical Romances, and as everyone knows, Lord Of Scoundrels. This is Fated Mates. I'm Sarah McLean. I read romance novels and I write them.

Jennifer Prokop 00:02:08 / #: And I'm Jennifer Prokop, a romance reader and editor. You are about to hear our trailblazer episode with Loretta, where she talks about how she came to writing romance, her research process, and why she believes in historical research and folding it so well into her books and her life in romance.

Sarah MacLean 00:02:32 / #: And how it is that Lord of Sundress came to be. Without further ado, let's get into it.

Jennifer Prokop 00:02:44 / #: Here we are with the Loretta Chase. I'm just going to make words now, just they're going to flow out of me in a rush, because I'm so overwhelmed.

Sarah MacLean 00:02:52 / #: Loretta, we are so thrilled to have you.

Loretta Chase 00:02:56 / #: Oh, thank you for having me.

Sarah MacLean 00:02:58 / #: It's a delight. I don't know that you know this, but we are avowed Loretta Chase fans here at the podcast. We reference your characters all the time.

Loretta Chase 00:03:09 / #: Oh, thank you.

Sarah MacLean 00:03:11 / #: And of course, we've talked a lot about Lord of Scoundrels, so I'm sure we'll get into that as well. But in general, I'm just so thrilled to have you here. Thank you.

Loretta Chase 00:03:20 / #: I feel honored to be here, because I know about your podcast and I think it's just very cool.

Sarah MacLean 00:03:26 / #: Thank you. So we start all of these conversations the same way, and that is to say, how did you come to this genre?

Loretta Chase 00:03:36 / #: I came in a very weird way because I was never a romance reader. My mind was poisoned by my English professors, so I thought very scornfully of romance. And the way I came to it was after I had been writing professionally, and my husband said to me, "Do you want to write video scripts for the rest of your life? What do you really want to do?" And eventually, after much weeping, I admitted that I wanted to write a novel, but I had never been able to. I would write and write and write, and it just went on forever and it didn't have a story, and it didn't make any sense.

00:04:23 / #: And I realized just in that conversation, I made the connection with what I was doing in video and what could be done in a novel. And I realized all I needed was structure. So when you're writing scripts for video, you have a specific structure, you have a message that you want to get across. And I would always ask the clients, "What's the message? Can you tell me in one sentence what you want the audience to come away with?" And I realized the genre fiction does that.

Jennifer Prokop 00:04:54 / #: It sure does, bless.

Loretta Chase 00:04:55 / #: Yes. So I'm looking at mystery. I'm looking at science fiction. I'm looking at various genres, but it was like, oh, wait a minute, love stories. That's the part of the books that I really like, and maybe that's where I should be working. And yeah, love conquers all. Yes, please. Because it doesn't, in so many of the classic novels, the women are victimized. They die if they have sex. And so, I thought, oh, well, this is a great way to correct that. And I have a structure. I have a structure. I have something I like, which is a love story. And that gave me my start, and it worked nicely.

Sarah MacLean 00:05:47 / #: When you talk about the books or the parts of the books that you always love, the love story, what were you reading before you came to the genre?

Loretta Chase 00:05:59 / #: Well, a good example would be like Charles Dickens, Bleak House. All right. So there's Lady Dedlock and she's had an illegitimate child, and there's no forgiveness for her, she has to die. Anna Karenina, she has an affair, she has to die. Women who follow their sexual inclinations or fall in love outside of the norms of the time, they're punished. And I wanted to rewrite those stories. So actually, I did that with one of mine, not quite a lady, I took Lady Dedlock story as a starting point and said, "Okay, here's a person who had a child out of wedlock. It was kept a big secret, but she's going to have a happy ending."

Jennifer Prokop 00:06:52 / #: So at some point, did you read romance as research, or did you just-

Loretta Chase 00:06:57 / #: Oh, yes.

Jennifer Prokop 00:06:58 / #: Okay. So I mean, once you decided, wait, I might want to write this, did that happen concurrently or did you stop and think, okay, I'm going to give myself permission to read these books now?

Loretta Chase 00:07:09 / #: I approached it the way I would've approached a project in an English class. I started doing the research.

Sarah MacLean 00:07:15 / #: Do the reading, Loretta.

Loretta Chase 00:07:19 / #: Yes, exactly. So I read maybe hundreds of romances because I was also looking to find where would I fit. So at that time, there was Kathleen Woodiwiss and Johanna Lindsey, and they wrote those big sprawling romances, and I didn't think that was me. And then, I encountered the traditional regencies and I thought, oh, this is perfect. This is a time period I'm very interested in. I love the witty banter. And it was like there were smaller books, so I felt like I could handle that for my first thing. So that was how I ended up there. But there was a lot of research before I actually started trying to write a book.

Sarah MacLean 00:08:14 / #: Your first books are traditional regencies and they're category regencies, right?

Loretta Chase 00:08:20 / #: Right. I wrote for Walker & Company.

Sarah MacLean 00:08:24 / #: Now, wait, that's a name we haven't talked about at all.

Jennifer Prokop 00:08:27 / #: I know. I don't don't think we've ever talked about that.

Sarah MacLean 00:08:28 / #: What is that?

Loretta Chase 00:08:30 / #: Wow. When I started writing, there were so many places that were publishing regencies. There were so many lines. I made a big list and I went with Walker because they published hard cover, and I thought that was cool, but I was not expecting to be accepted. That was my thing. And they accepted the book.

Jennifer Prokop 00:08:53 / #: So this is Isabella?

Loretta Chase 00:08:55 / #: Yes, yes. And then, I later discovered it was primarily they were publishing for libraries. And that worked out fine because my agent ended up selling the paperback rights to Avon. And it was through Avon that I met my editor, Ellen Edwards, and she was the person who got me to write historical romance, longer books.

Sarah MacLean 00:09:21 / #: How many books did you do with Walker?

Loretta Chase 00:09:24 / #: Six.

Sarah MacLean 00:09:25 / #: Okay. Walker was publishing the hardcovers, and Avon was publishing the paperbacks?

Loretta Chase 00:09:29 / #: Mostly, except for one book. I think Fawcett had published one book. The rest of it were Avon.

Sarah MacLean 00:09:35 / #: And Ellen was always your editor at Avon?

Loretta Chase 00:09:39 / #: Yes, yes.

Sarah MacLean 00:09:40 / #: So obviously Ellen Edwards is a name that we have talked about before and heard many people talk about. Can you give us a sense of what that editorial relationship was like with Ellen? Because it does feel like she had a really special eye.

Loretta Chase 00:09:57 / #: Oh, my gosh. She was amazing. I loved her so much. She would write a little note, three words in the margins, and a whole idea would open up for me, or I would see how I had gone astray. But she wouldn't say, "You've gone astray." She would just ask a little question. And she was so perceptive. When she invited me to write historical romance, I said, I don't think I can do that. I don't think I can write those big books. And she said, "It's just like what you're doing only bigger." And then she said, "Read Laura Kinsale."

Jennifer Prokop 00:10:41 / #: Oh, sure.

Sarah MacLean 00:10:44 / #: A perfect beginning for you, yeah.

Loretta Chase 00:10:46 / #: Yes. So she knew that I would connect with what Laura Kinsale was writing, and she was absolutely right. She was just so insightful. I can't say enough about her. I think she was a fabulous editor.

Sarah MacLean 00:11:02 / #: So you moved from Walker over to Avon for single titles, and that's the early '90s?

Loretta Chase 00:11:11 / #: Yes.

Sarah MacLean 00:11:11 / #: Yeah. And that's sort of what we always clock here as the heyday of there was a really, or maybe not the heyday, but there was a really remarkable sea change in historical right then in the early '90s. And it was led largely by, it seems like Ellen there. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit about what was going on during that time period. Did it feel like readers were just drawn to historicals? Now, we look back and we say, "Okay, well, Ellen, she'd acquired you and you put out Lord of Scoundrels," which we'll get to. And then she acquired Beverly Jenkins, who was doing what Bev does over there. And Lisa Kleypas' books from the early '90s really were changing the game. And was there something?

Jennifer Prokop 00:12:06 / #: Was there in the water?

Loretta Chase 00:12:10 / #: I'm not sure, but there was something else. I mean, Avon wasn't the only place. This is the interesting thing. A lot of the friends that I made early on were writing regencies for Signet, and then Signet started doing what they were calling Super Regencies, so it was like the traditional Regency, but a bigger story, more sex. And that's a lot similar to what was going on at Avon, although Avon's weren't quite so much in that Regency, not precisely in that Regency mode. So there was definitely something going on in other places. It was just that-

Sarah MacLean 00:12:45 / #: Across the board?

Loretta Chase 00:12:46 / #: Yes, yes. And that Regency sensibility, I think was, for some reason, it ebbs and flows. I've been around for so long because I'm so ancient that I see these ebbs and flows of what people are reading and what they're not reading. I really can't account for it. It's hard to account for what happens with tastes. And I'm not that analytical to begin with. I write what I write and cross my fingers. That's okay.

Jennifer Prokop 00:13:20 / #: If you had six books before, oh my God, I've already spaced on the name of that-

Loretta Chase 00:13:25 / #: Walker.

Jennifer Prokop 00:13:26 / #: Walker.

Loretta Chase 00:13:27 / #: Yes.

Jennifer Prokop 00:13:27 / #: Does that mean Lord of Scoundrels was the first Avon book? I'm sort of looking at FictionDB, but it maybe-

Sarah MacLean 00:13:35 / #: No, it was The Lion's Daughter, right?

Loretta Chase 00:13:36 / #: The Lion's Daughter, and then Captives of the Night. And I've always forgotten to tell this story about that transition, but right around the time, I think when I had written Captives of the Night, Jayne Ann Krentz started writing as Amanda Quick, and I think she sort of triggered a sea change in the way we were approaching historical romances because she came with that contemporary romance sensibility, and she was writing romantic suspense.

00:14:15 / #: And when she turned to writing these historical sort of Regency Victorian set, they had that feel to them, and they weren't quite the sprawling books that we were working on at that time. And I'm sure that fed into my thinking when I was writing Lord of Scoundrels, because it's quite a different book from Captives of the Night and The Lion's Daughter. And I think that's part of it was that influence of, wow, this is another way to do this. And there are things that you absorbed by osmosis. And it was only, I mean, actually really, the other day when I was thinking about that, that I remembered about Jayne Ann Krentz and that Amanda Quick thing and how that seemed to have changed things.

Jennifer Prokop 00:15:09 / #: I vividly remember as a reader reading Amanda Quick and feeling like this was different. I could tell it was different. And I just was so drawn to those books. And it's not that I didn't love, I of course loved it all, but I vividly remember really feeling like everything about those books was different. And so, it doesn't surprise me to know that that was apparent to the authors at the time as well. New rules almost, for what could be done.

Loretta Chase 00:15:40 / #: Yes.

Sarah MacLean 00:15:42 / #: It felt like heroines especially were shifting at the time.

Loretta Chase 00:15:46 / #: Yes.

Sarah MacLean 00:15:47 / #: Amanda Quick brought a very different kind of heroine to the Regency.

Loretta Chase 00:15:51 / #: Yes, absolutely. And it was more clearly feminist and more clearly aware of differences in communication between women and men, and addressed some really interesting aspects of male-female relationships that I did not feel as though we had or I was dealing with anyway, in my earlier books necessarily. And then, I started reading some other things. One of the books that was very influential was You Just Don't Understand.

Jennifer Prokop 00:16:28 / #: Oh yeah, I remember that. Sure.

Sarah MacLean 00:16:30 / #: I don't remember that.

Jennifer Prokop 00:16:34 / #: It was like a pop culture kind of psychology book.

Sarah MacLean 00:16:38 / #: I see. Women and men in conversation.

Jennifer Prokop 00:16:39 / #: About women and men in conversation. And it was like the first time I was ever, and this was when I was in college. I was in college from 1991 to 1995, and it was this take, I remember about topping people when you're talking and someone comes along and just talks over you, which I feel like I'm kind of doing now. Sorry, everybody. And it was really a real take at this is how people communicate differently based on how essentially they were raised in their gender identity.

Loretta Chase 00:17:12 / #: So that was very enlightening. And then, that also led to my having conversations with my husband about that, about communication styles. So I think that also influenced the way I dealt with the relationships in my stories.

Jennifer Prokop 00:17:27 / #: This week's episode of Faded Mates is sponsored by Desirée Niccoli, author of the Haven Cove duology, Called to the Deep, book one, and the Song of Lorelei, book two.

Sarah MacLean 00:17:39 / #: Jen, did you know that in many circles, it is not in fact the month of May. It's the month of Mermay.

Jennifer Prokop 00:17:47 / #: Amazing. I feel better for knowing this.

Sarah MacLean 00:17:50 / #: Listen, if you're out there and you are enjoying all the drawings of mermaids that are being posted on social media and all the talk about mermaids that's happening, and you're just cannot wait for this new live action Disney movie, we have the series for you. This one is pretty delicious. And I use that word intentionally because it features Killian Quinn, the captain of an offshore fishing boat that receives a distress call from a sailing ship in a terrible storm early in the book in the Duology. He and his crew head out. They make a big save, they save the crew. And a woman who does not know who she is and has no knowledge of how she got on the boat, turns out this is Lorelei Roth who is not just a normal woman, she is actually a mermaid. And in the world building of this series, mermaids eat people.

Jennifer Prokop 00:18:49 / #: I'm not even mad about it.

Sarah MacLean 00:18:50 / #: Listen, at one point in the blurb it says, "The handsome captain begins to look like a tasty snack in more ways than one."

Jennifer Prokop 00:18:59 / #: Perfect. No notes.

Sarah MacLean 00:19:00 / #: Are they going to get together? What happens when he finds out she's a flesh eating mermaid? Does she eat him and not, I mean, I'm sure-

Jennifer Prokop 00:19:09 / #: Sure. We all know what you're about to say. Here's the thing, everybody, in celebration of Mermay, you can get both books in the Haven Cove duology between May 15th and May 22nd for only 99 cents wherever you buy your eBooks. It's also available in print. Thanks to Desiree for sponsoring this week's episode.

Sarah MacLean 00:19:29 / #: And happy Mermay to all who celebrate. So Ellen brings you over to do these kind of single titles for Avon. You write two, and then you write Lord of Scoundrels, and let's get into it. I mean, because we have to. Tell us about the writing of it, the conception of it, and then because you say, "Well, they weren't like these big sprawling books from before," but Lord of Scoundrels is a epic store. I mean, it covers a lot of ground. So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how it came to be.

Loretta Chase 00:20:15 / #: Okay, I had to make myself some notes about this because-

Jennifer Prokop 00:20:19 / #: Long time ago.

Loretta Chase 00:20:22 / #: Well, yes, long time ago, and I write intuitively, so I'm not quite sure what I'm doing most of the time. There were some things that fed into that, but the main thing about that book was that it was in me. I did not have to find it. It was there and it was demanding to be written. The characters were in my mind very clearly from the beginning, and that never happens. I'm always struggling. I'm always fumbling. It takes me a while to get to know who they are and what do they want and what's the goal, et cetera, et cetera. In this case, it was all very clear to me.

00:21:08 / #: The main thing I saw in the beginning was this child who had had this horrible, horrible childhood, badly traumatized, that turned him into this person who's sort of monstrous. And I thought, what do you do for this person or what's needed here for some kind of a balance? And the heroine was there instantly. It was like, okay, she's someone who just gets it. She gets the thinking, she gets the guy thinking, she gets whatever it is, and why is she that way? Because she grew up with boys all the time, and she's just smart and paying attention. So I needed someone who could see through him, and Jessica just came to my mind as... So they really formed in themselves on the stage. And the rest of that book, I know it sounds mystical, and it's like writers shouldn't wait for this to happen because it doesn't usually, but it just wrote itself. It was like a movie, and all I had to do was write it.

Sarah MacLean 00:22:22 / #: That's how it feels.

Jennifer Prokop 00:22:24 / #: It is how it feels reading it.

Sarah MacLean 00:22:25 / #: When you read it, you just feel like it's just perfection.

Loretta Chase 00:22:29 / #: Thank you. But I consider it a gift. I got a gift from the writing gods with that book.

Jennifer Prokop 00:22:38 / #: You were talking about Dain's like trauma, right?

Loretta Chase 00:22:41 / #: Right.

Jennifer Prokop 00:22:41 / #: So what's interesting to me about that is I think a lot of people kind of, I don't know, write about trauma without doing a lot of research on trauma. And at one point, we have a friend who is an expert on trauma, and she was like, "This book does it so perfectly." I mean, was that part also intuitive, or was that something where you really did think like how can I write about his trauma? I mean, I don't know, maybe it all was mystical, but it's hard, I think, to write about traumatized characters without feeling like you're taking advantage of traumatized people. I don't know if that makes sense.

Loretta Chase 00:23:22 / #: It's an empathetic thing, and it's also, if you look back at your own childhood and the way children treat one another, that wasn't so hard for me. I knew quite a bit, I had done quite a bit of research, so I understood about the bullying at Eton, and it wasn't that hard to imagine a child who's been rejected by his family and has dealt with abandonment. I think it was just, I don't know, this is something that writers do. You try to put yourself in the other person's shoes, or you think back to your own childhood and maybe your friends, what happened to them or things you saw in the playground. You're drawing on all of that. So it wasn't as though I studied trauma, I was just imagining, trying to imagine what kind of torturous childhood would make a person just shut everything off.

Sarah MacLean 00:24:32 / #: So obviously, this book struck a chord across romance. I mean, it is a book that was talked about then, it continues to be talked about. It is on every list. It is a book that is held up by so many of us, including us as the best of it, the best of the genre. And I wonder if you could speak to the reception at the time, and it sounds like it was electric for you in the writing, but what happened after?

Loretta Chase 00:25:08 / #: Well, that's what's so funny, it's like when I wrote it, I felt, and I said this to Ellen, I said, "I think this is a pretty strong book."

Sarah MacLean 00:25:19 / #: Sure. That sounds exactly right. I mean, writers are always like, "I think it's okay."

Loretta Chase 00:25:25 / #: And the thing about Ellen-

Sarah MacLean 00:25:27 / #: Oh God, I loved her so much.

Loretta Chase 00:25:29 / #: She used to write 40-page notes on your books, which no one has time to do anymore.

Sarah MacLean 00:25:37 / #: Whoa.

Loretta Chase 00:25:37 / #: But they were so wonderful. Well, she had two little notes on this book. That was it. For Ellen, that never happened, that never happened. So I felt like, okay, this book really holds together, so that was great. But in terms of reception, they sent it out for blurbs, and I got really nice blurbs from various writers, but the book didn't take off or anything. It was just, it did okay. And then, it did win an RWA RITA, but that book took 12 years to earn out its advance.

Jennifer Prokop 00:26:19 / #: Oh, wow.

Sarah MacLean 00:26:19 / #: Wow. Really?

Loretta Chase 00:26:21 / #: Yes.

Sarah MacLean 00:26:23 / #: And it just was the little engine that could, or did something happen that-

Loretta Chase 00:26:28 / #: I don't know. It started appearing on that All About Romance List as a top book. And then, I think that it might've been really, a lot of word of mouth started so more and more people started reading the book and then it built up momentum. But initially, it was no big deal.

Sarah MacLean 00:26:51 / #: It was just a very good book.

Loretta Chase 00:26:55 / #: Right.

Jennifer Prokop 00:26:56 / #: I'm not surprised by it, because I think one of the fascinating things about romance readers, and we've talked about this before, is there are books I love when I read them, but I never want to revisit them. And then, there are books that grow on me over time, and I think that maybe there's something special about romance in that way. And so, it doesn't necessarily surprise me because there are books that when I first read them, I'm like, "It was okay." And then I'm like, "Wait, why have I reread that book now seven times?"

00:27:29 / #: So it surprises me the way things have a hold. I don't know, like a romance, the keeper shelf is no joke. And I think that the cumulative effect of it being on the keeper shelf for so many people, that word of mouth is really powerful. I mean, when I first started talking to people openly about liking romance, I would say to them, they would ask for recommendations. And I'll be like, "I have two for you. And one's historical, one's contemporary. And if you don't like either of them, then you don't like romance." Which you guys, that seems dramatic, but that's what I would tell people. And it was Lord of Scoundrels and Bet Me by Jenny Crusie.

Loretta Chase 00:28:11 / #: Oh, that book. Yes, yes.

Sarah MacLean 00:28:14 / #: Just like terrific.

Jennifer Prokop 00:28:15 / #: These books are what romance is all about. And if you don't like them, then you don't like romance. And that's okay, more for me.

Sarah MacLean 00:28:23 / #: But I also think there's something too, Jessica, I mean, not to keep coming back to the heroines, but I feel like Jessica Trent holds up however many years later, we don't need to count them, Loretta, but I feel like we read Lord of Scoundrels for one of our deep dive episodes a couple of years ago, and did a big episode on it. And if Jessica walked off the page of Lord of Scoundrels right now and walked into a modern historical written this year, she remains as relevant, as amazing, as aspirational as any heroine ever. And I think that is a hallmark of a book that just will forever be one that we hold up. But I'm fascinated to hear that it took 12 years to earn out. Wow.

Loretta Chase 00:29:32 / #: Yep.

Sarah MacLean 00:29:32 / #: Okay. So you've written what is arguably, I mean, not here arguably, but arguably the greatest romance of all time, but we still have to, it hasn't earned out, so you still have to make a living. And I want to talk a little bit here. I think this is a good place to talk about it, because one of the things that we have loved, or that I have loved about your books over the years forever is how much research goes into them, how much love and care you give the worlds that you create. You used to have a blog that I loved very much called Two Nerdy History Girls, which you had with your friend, whose name is now escaping me.

Loretta Chase 00:30:14 / #: Susan Holloway Scott.

Sarah MacLean 00:30:16 / #: Yes. And in that blog, you used to tell these great stories about how dark the ballrooms would actually be in romance novels, or the legendary scene from Lord of Scoundrels is that is the glove scene with the button hook. There's so much discussion where a fan, right, or remember the dueling book with the bird pistols?

Loretta Chase 00:30:45 / #: Yes. Yeah, the bird pistols.

Jennifer Prokop 00:30:47 / #: Right. Which has like, wait, this is a real thing. This is fascinating.

Sarah MacLean 00:30:51 / #: And then, my other favorite, Mr. Impossible, all the Egypt stuff. And I do want to know if that came from The Mummy or not, because that is a discussion that comes.

Loretta Chase 00:31:01 / #: Yes. No, it did.

Sarah MacLean 00:31:04 / #: You heard it here.

Loretta Chase 00:31:05 / #: The Mummy absolutely inspired that book, yes.

Sarah MacLean 00:31:09 / #: You just made a lot of people really happy.

Jennifer Prokop 00:31:11 / #: Exactly. This has been speculation for a long time, and now we have confirmation. Amazing.

Loretta Chase 00:31:18 / #: Oh, yeah. I was like, oh, wait, I can do this. And I always wanted to write about Egypt. I had been so fascinated by that, particularly what happened in the early 19th century and the discoveries that were made then. But I mean, there were these intrepid women who were involved in that discovery. So yeah, I loved doing the research for that. I have way more books than I ever needed to write that book, something like 50 books on Egypt. And no, having them in the library wasn't enough. I had to own them.

Jennifer Prokop 00:31:55 / #: We support you. Everyone just buy the books they want.

Sarah MacLean 00:31:59 / #: So talk about the research, because I do think that that is one thing that often historical romance novelists get. People don't realize quite how much research goes into the books because it does feel so invisible a lot of the time.

Loretta Chase 00:32:14 / #: Well, the goal is to make it invisible. You read books and books and make tons and tons of notes and look at all these images, and you're digging into historical newspapers and two lines appear on the page that have to do with that topic. But as Susan and I have often said, we really have to understand it. We have to be able to visualize. We have to feel like we're there in order to make the reader feel as though she's there.

00:32:45 / #: And I love it. I love reading the old newspapers, and it's like, this has been one of the fascinating and positive aspects of technology from the time when I first started writing, when we had no access to anything, and trying to find information on the Regency. We're so dependent on what Georgette Heyer wrote and a limited selection of books and memoirs that were not very accurate. And now, we can get primary sources. And I just love that. I love reading the newspaper and finding an event that happened, say, "Oh, wait a minute, I'm going to use that in a story." It's like, I did that in the last book, Ten Things I Hate About The Duke. I read about this fancy fair that was so crowded with people, and people were fainting because it was crowded. I said, "Oh, I have to set a scene there."

Sarah MacLean 00:33:48 / #: So tell us about the research process. As you said, you're an intuitive writer. Are you researching as you go? Do you sort of have a sense of what you're going to tackle in the book? Do you have a file? How does it work?

Loretta Chase 00:34:04 / #: Initially, what I was doing, I was taking, I think it was Stephen King's advice, and I was, or maybe it was Lawrence Block, somebody. I was researching what I needed to know for the scene. But now, and over the last maybe 20 years, I feel as though I need to get some sense of where I'm going to be with the story, what's the location? And then, I sort of build from there. And I kind of like that method better. I like going through the newspapers and looking at what's happening, say in May of 1832, and thinking about what can I do with that, because there are tons of ideas there for me. So now, it's a little more of a little bit some of the work in advance, but then most of the work as I'm writing.

Sarah MacLean 00:35:04 / #: At some point, Mr. Impossible, that series is not with Avon, that is with Berkeley.

Loretta Chase 00:35:12 / #: Right.

Sarah MacLean 00:35:12 / #: Right. So what happens in that world? How does the shift happen?

Loretta Chase 00:35:21 / #: Well, what happened was I finished The Last Hellion, and I had writer's block. My father had died, and I didn't realize that that was what was going on. It was grief. And I had very bad writer's block, and I couldn't write. And I bought back my contract, and I did not think I was going to write another novel.

Sarah MacLean 00:35:48 / #: Oh, my gosh.

Loretta Chase 00:35:50 / #: And then, what I did, I went back to writing video scripts and that sort of thing for a few years. And then, things change in our personal circumstances, and it became necessary for me to actually get a real job. And I've got myself a new agent, and she put me in with Berkeley. There had been an editor there who had been courting me all during my mental block period, because I was still going to conferences, Gail... Oh, I can't remember her name. Anyway, she had been courting me. She said, "Whatever you write, just can I look at it." And so, she ended up being the editor. So I was at Berkeley for a few years, but then she left Berkeley and my agent wasn't really thrilled with how the books were being sold. And so she-

Sarah MacLean 00:36:46 / #: When was that? That had to have been-

Jennifer Prokop 00:36:49 / #: Early 2000s, yeah?

Loretta Chase 00:36:52 / #: It was early 2000s when I went to Berkeley. And then, let's see, so I wrote Miss Wonderful, Mr. Impossible, and Lord Perfect. Oh, and then I had breast cancer.

Jennifer Prokop 00:37:05 / #: Oh, it's a small other thing.

Loretta Chase 00:37:09 / #: Oh, yeah. So I was finishing that book. I was finishing Lord Perfect when I had breast cancer, and I had to take a little time off from writing. And then, by that time I was getting ready to go back to work, that was when my agent was saying, "I think we can do better at Avon." And Avon welcomed me back. And the last couple of books in that series were through Avon. Some of these things, it's like your personal life messes things up for you or makes them better or whatever, but that's what happened.

Sarah MacLean 00:37:46 / #: Yeah. I want to go back to this intuitive writing piece too, because it feels like we've known each other for a while, and it feels like one of the magical things about your books is that you write them and you write until you're done, and then the book comes out. It feels like you really do honor the text and the story in a way that many of us, because of the way romance works, don't do. So I wonder when you sort of come to a new series or to a new book, are you waiting for inspiration to strike before you start?

Loretta Chase 00:38:31 / #: No. I start writing, and this has to do with my training in art, which my art professor always said, "If you wait for your inspiration to start, you might be waiting forever. Just start doing the work." So I start doing the work, and I find my way in the course of doing the work. So sometimes, I've been able to write a nice long outline, and that works beautifully, and that did work beautifully for me for a number of books. Other times, I just have to do it by the seat of my pants, because that's the way the book wants to be written, so I have to do whatever. It's hard to say, again, intuitive. I'm doing whatever is working at the time.

00:39:21 / #: And lately, it seems to be sit down, start writing, see where it goes, figure out the things as you go along, and then it's like go back and make it come together. So it's a construction process. It's not linear at all. And I don't think my mind really is linear. And I don't think even my earlier books were all that linear, but I was able to work out plots in advance in a way that made my life much easier. But I just can't do that lately.

Jennifer Prokop 00:39:54 / #: No. I mean-

Loretta Chase 00:39:55 / #: I wish I could.

Jennifer Prokop 00:39:55 / #: I'm the same way.

Loretta Chase 00:39:56 / #: But I can't.

Jennifer Prokop 00:39:57 / #: Have to.

Loretta Chase 00:39:59 / #: Yeah, you have a vague idea of what you want to do. It was like when I did The Dressmaker Series, for instance, I thought, all right, I'd like to have three sisters. I have some idea of what they're trying to accomplish. I know what they want to do. They want to rule the world. And then, it would be a matter of figuring out, okay, who are they? What are the differences between them? And then, the plots start coming together, but they arise very much out of the characters. So if I don't know the characters, I can't get a story. I would love to be able to write a plot and have the story go with it. Never.

Sarah MacLean 00:40:44 / #: Does that happen for anyone?

Loretta Chase 00:40:46 / #: Never.

Sarah MacLean 00:40:46 / #: I don't believe it.

Jennifer Prokop 00:40:49 / #: I think character is really king in romance. I think that's, for me, at least as a reader, I feel like when people start with a plot, sometimes I'm like, yeah, but why are these characters here? Right. Wait, yeah, that's not enough. I need to really believe that how they got there.

Loretta Chase 00:41:10 / #: Yeah, they're not puppets.

Sarah MacLean 00:41:13 / #: This week's episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by Avery Maxwell, author of Your Last First Kiss.

Jennifer Prokop 00:41:20 / #: Penny Mulligan is a mess. She has had a disastrous first marriage. She's basically the single mother to three perfect but rowdy boys and an ex-husband who is a bunch of trouble. The only thing she has going for her is the perfect eye candy who shows up bringing coffee to her boss every Wednesday, Dillon Henry. He is just perfect fantasy material, handsome, charming, thoughtful. But she's just not in a place for this.

Sarah MacLean 00:41:51 / #: No. She has three boys and an ex-husband. Nobody has time for new people.

Jennifer Prokop 00:41:55 / #: So she is just like, "I'm going to have fantasies about Mr. Wednesday." But then Dillon freaking Henry shows up at her doorstep, and he's totally into her, and he is ready to just figure out a way to take the perfect chaos of her life and turn it into HEA.

Sarah MacLean 00:42:16 / #: Oh, I love it. This is great for anybody who loves a small town romance, for people who are interested in single moms as heroines, friends to lovers, second chance, found family. If you want to read Your Last First Kiss, what a title, you can find it in print or in eBook, or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited. Thanks as always to Avery Maxwell for sponsoring the episode.

Jennifer Prokop 00:42:49 / #: We talk a lot. I think I know Sarah experiences at a deep level that romance readers connect with the books in such a way that almost everyone we've had on talks about letters they've received from readers. So what do readers tell you about your books?

Loretta Chase 00:43:13 / #: Oh, my gosh. Particularly during COVID, but before, I have had so many messages from people telling me the books help them get through cancer. The books help them get through grief. The books help them get through COVID. And I mean, from the time I started writing romance, I really understood the value. But I think it's had much more of an impact in the last few years of what we do when we write romance. What we're doing for other people when we write romance is we're giving them a place to be where things are, okay, you know it's going to come out right in the end.

00:44:08 / #: And the more difficult the world around you is, the more important it is to have this place where you can go. And I'm all for escapism, and I'm never going to hesitate to say that my books are escapist because they are. And I feel like they should be. Yeah, I've had messages that just made me cry. And I think the last couple of years have been so hard on people that it makes, in my view, romance more important than ever because we're giving them that safe place to be for the time of reading the book.

Sarah MacLean 00:44:52 / #: So you have people who have inspired you over the years, and it sounds like you've had a group of other writers who you've connected with and who love research as much as you. But I wonder if you could talk about who are the people who you have spent who have really kept you going? Because I know that this isn't always an easy job, right?

Loretta Chase 00:45:23 / #: Yeah. Well, Susan Holloway Scott and I have been friends for a million years now, and we talk on the phone a lot. We go to Colonial Williamsburg. We meet up at Colonial Williamsburg almost every year, and she's really important part. She's just been, well, a really good friend, and we can talk. And that's part of the thing too. It was one of the great things I discovered when I started writing romance and I started going to conferences. It's like, oh, wow, I found my tribe. We're talking to other women mostly who are writers, and we're living in that same environment and we're having the same struggles. And that's not something I'm going to be finding in my everyday life. I love my husband, I love my sisters, and I can talk to them about stuff, but not the way you can talk to other writers. So Susan's important.

00:46:27 / #: There have been a lot of people over the years. When I was first starting out, Mary Jo Putney was very, very encouraging to me. She reached out to me, sent me a letter early in my career with my first or second book. There was a little cabal of writers sign, Regency Writers with whom I was friends, and we would get together at conferences. And then, over the years, I've met more people. It's like now I chit-chat with Caroline Linden, so it's evolving. But yeah, that's one of the great things that the great discoveries for me, when I started writing romance, it was finding all these women and they were feminists like me, and we had similar goals, and same kind of fights and the same kinds of... People don't understand what I'm doing, that sort of thing.

Sarah MacLean 00:47:30 / #: Do you feel like that's thing shifting now, or do you feel like we're still getting the same kind of response?

Loretta Chase 00:47:41 / #: I'll tell you, I missed the conferences.

Jennifer Prokop 00:47:43 / #: Yeah, me too.

Loretta Chase 00:47:48 / #: It's like, yeah, Zoom is nice, but it's not person to person sitting in the bar or outside a meeting place and hanging out with your friends and talking or meeting new people that way. The personal direct conversations are something I miss very much. I mean, my local writers group, it's like they haven't been able to have a conference because well, once COVID simmered down, and it was possible, it's like, well, we need volunteers and people don't have time and people are overworked. So that's something I... I miss that community, in other words. And with the crash and burn of RWA, that was bad, and romantic times for all the craziness, that was a great way to connect, wasn't it?

Sarah MacLean 00:49:00 / #: It really was. Jen never experienced it. It was a whole ride.

Loretta Chase 00:49:07 / #: So I only did it once, but it was such a trip. I was exhausted afterwards. But it was really wonderful. It was fun.

Sarah MacLean 00:49:15 / #: So this is one of the hard questions, I think, but what do you think is the mark that your books have left on the genre or are continuing to leave on the genre?

Loretta Chase 00:49:35 / #: I don't know.

Sarah MacLean 00:49:36 / #: Maybe.

Loretta Chase 00:49:38 / #: I don't know. Someone else would have to tell me what mark they're leaving, because I-

Sarah MacLean 00:49:43 / #: Well, maybe we can try it this way. What do you think is the hallmark of a Loretta Chase novel?

Loretta Chase 00:49:52 / #: Okay. When I first started writing, the one thing that was very, very clear in my mind was that my heroines were going to be strong. They were not going to be victims, so there was that. The second thing was I was never going to write down to my readers. I was always going to assume everyone was smarter than I was. So that's informed what I've done. And then, the other thing is, but the other thing has evolved, which is the research. And I feel as though it's possible for historical romance to get closer to that historical novel approach to research and ground people in the world that you're writing about. But that doesn't mean that it has to be, but that's what I need to do.

00:50:56 / #: So I think it's that the three things is the very strong heroin, the not talking down to people, and the world, trying to create a historical world as close to accurate as I can, but still without violating the trust my readers have that I'm going to keep them in a safe place where things are going to come out right. So I might touch on some ugly aspects of history, but I'm not going to force my readers to live in that because things are crappy enough around them for most people, and that's not what they come to my books for. It's the escape. I want them to have a lovely escape, feel like they're time traveling and dig the heroine the most.

Jennifer Prokop 00:52:01 / #: I mean, Sarah and I have both been readers. She's been writing now for-

Sarah MacLean 00:52:05 / #: We don't have to count them.

Jennifer Prokop 00:52:05 / #: ... however, 20 years, whatever it is. Okay, sorry. We've been reading for a long time. One of our questions is sort of about the ebb and flow of the genre. So how do you think you've seen romance change over time, or do you have thoughts about where you see romance going in the future?

Loretta Chase 00:52:27 / #: There has been ebb and flow for sure, starting out in a world where traditional Regency romances were a big thing, and there are dozens and dozens of lines, and then they kind of lose their popularity. And then, every few years we hear historical romance is dead. So I've heard that a bunch of times, and in fact, I'm hearing it lately.

Sarah MacLean 00:52:53 / #: Me too. But it doesn't die, right?

Loretta Chase 00:52:59 / #: Yeah. It doesn't seem to die. And the readers say they like going there. They want to go there. They want to be transported. They want that time travel aspect. They want to be taken farther away from current reality, and that's what historical romance does. I mean, contemporary romance also takes you away, but there's still that element of the real world's there, and there's some real world things we have to deal with. Whereas my people are going around in their little carriages and they don't know anything about cell phones and YouTube or Facebook or TikTok or any of those things. So it feels like it's an escape to a quieter time.

00:53:49 / #: And I think that, I believe that will continue to be something that people like, people have always read historical books for hundreds of years. They don't always read books that are set in their own time period. So I think that's a continuing interest, but I really am not sure what's going to happen. Things are in an uproar right now. There's a lot of upheaval in the publishing industry, so it's a little puzzling.

00:54:24 / #: In terms of other changes that I have seen, well, there's definitely been one big change for the better, which is when I started out almost pretty much like 99% of the books were by white authors and they were about white people. And now, we have books that have different cultural slants, and we have books that are dealing with different kinds of sexuality. Early in my career, one of my gay friends said to me, "Are there any gay romances?" And I said, "I don't know about any." But now, that's there. So I think those things are great that we have evolved to that point.

Sarah MacLean 00:55:12 / #: So we always like to ask two questions to wrap up. And the first is, which of your books do you hear the most about? Which is the book that readers come to you the most to discuss? And the second is, which is the book that you as the writer feel the most connection to, whatever way that means?

Loretta Chase 00:55:46 / #: Obviously the one I hear the most about is Lord of Scoundrels.

Sarah MacLean 00:55:48 / #: That was an easy, that's a softball.

Loretta Chase 00:55:54 / #: Right. So if we do an in-person thing, and we have a bookstore there and they want to order books, I always have to have Lord of Scoundrels there because people want it. Which is, I mean, that's a gift that people still want to read my book that I wrote a long time ago, particularly in a genre that seems to have such a short shelf life. And in terms of what books I feel the best about or strongest about or love the most or whatever, incredibly proud of Lord of Scoundrels. How can I not be? On the other hand, my favorite book is always the latest book, the one I most recently finished, because I like to feel that I'm getting better as a writer. So I felt very proud of the last two books. I especially felt very proud of Ten Things I Hate About the Duke, and I hope I'm going to feel even better about this next book if I ever get it finished. So my favorite-

Jennifer Prokop 00:57:08 / #: Would you care to talk about that one at all? No pressure.

Loretta Chase 00:57:11 / #: I'm happy to talk about. No, no, it's good.

Sarah MacLean 00:57:13 / #: Jen knows already.

Loretta Chase 00:57:14 / #: People ask.

Sarah MacLean 00:57:15 / #: She's been around me long enough, Loretta. I know I'm like, she knows that these are sticky questions.

Jennifer Prokop 00:57:23 / #: I know, exactly. I would never have brought it up if you had not mentioned it first. I just want to put that-

Loretta Chase 00:57:28 / #: Thank you. I appreciate that. But I've done a couple of blog posts because I just get so many. "When's the third book coming out? Is there a third book? What happened to the Blackwoods?" So I had writer's block again. And it started, let's just say there was a political situation going on in the world.

Sarah MacLean 00:57:54 / #: Gosh.

Loretta Chase 00:57:55 / #: That just depressed the daylights out of me and made me crazy, and it was just so incomprehensible, so there was that. And then, in the middle of that comes COVID. And you're thinking, oh wow, this is such a great opportunity. I'm isolated, I can't go anywhere.

Jennifer Prokop 00:58:17 / #: No, seems wrong.

Loretta Chase 00:58:17 / #: I'll write a book. Nothing, blank. So I'm sitting in front of the computer every day dutifully, because you don't wait for inspiration, you start writing. And I'm writing every single day, and I'm writing complete garbage, just boring crap day after day after day after day after day. So yeah, that's what happened. And I had to tell my publisher and my agent, I thought, "I'm sorry, I can't deliver. The book's way over." It's like over a year overdue. And I'm just now starting to make it get together, but it's still a struggle. I feel like I'm emerging from the writer's block, but it's not coming the way it should be. So it's been hard. This has been a really tough time. It's not any comfort to know I'm not the only one either. That's no comfort.

Sarah MacLean 00:59:16 / #: I mean, one of the questions, this is a question we get so often, I mean, we writers, and I'm sure you've gotten it a million times, but this question of writer's block, what do you do? How do you come out from underneath it? And now, because you sort of feel like maybe the shroud is being lifted, is there some piece of advice that you have for those of us out here who are also feeling weighted down by the world?

Loretta Chase 00:59:54 / #: I've done a couple of approaches. So the first time I had writer's block, I just walked away and did something completely different, which was writing video scripts. It wasn't all that satisfying, but boy, it pays really well.

Sarah MacLean 01:00:13 / #: Sure, good.

Loretta Chase 01:00:15 / #: But this time, I just felt like I had to keep writing because then I felt like if I didn't keep writing, I would succumb to despair, and I didn't want to go there. So I kept writing. A couple of times, I said, "Okay, I'm going to just stop for two weeks and see if that refreshes my brain. I'm going to go do this. I'm going to go do that." And we have traveled, so refresh the brain. But this time, I've just kept at it. I just keep writing it in the hopes that things will start becoming clear and it's actually working.

01:01:01 / #: The hero and the heroine have very gradually and reluctantly started letting me know who they are and what they want. And so, that's incredibly encouraging to me. And also, it helps if you have someone to talk to that's a trusted professional. And I am very fortunate in my agent and editor, so I can talk to them about things and bounce ideas off them, show the material, and have them come back and give me little bits of inspiration here and there. I think we each have to find our own way out of this. I've heard of people say, "Well, I just walk away for a couple of days and it comes back."

Sarah MacLean 01:01:47 / #: Days?

Loretta Chase 01:01:48 / #: It's like, oh, I'm [inaudible 01:01:50 / #] what happened.

Jennifer Prokop 01:01:51 / #: Is that writer's block or is that just like a writer's burp? I mean.

Loretta Chase 01:01:54 / #: Exactly. That's a good analogy. So I think for me right now, what's been working is to just keep writing, just keep writing because I'm a writer. Even if it's crap, it's something, and you never know what's going to come out of it. And that's happened a few times. It was like, I'm writing crap, I'm writing crap, I'm writing... Oh, okay, I can work with this. So that's been the approach. I would not wish this on anybody. It sucks, but there is going to be a book.

Sarah MacLean 01:02:28 / #: Great, we're ready when you are.

Loretta Chase 01:02:30 / #: It's like a terminate. No. I told my agent, I said, "I'm going to write this book. I have to write this book. I need to write this book. I want to write this book." It's going to get written one way or another.

Jennifer Prokop 01:02:44 / #: I just want to say this was amazing because I tried to keep my cool the entire time. I want everyone to appreciate that.

Sarah MacLean 01:02:54 / #: If you live in New England or feel like coming to New England, Loretta is going to be at the Ashland Public Library in Massachusetts on Saturday, May 20, 2023, for the RomCon up there. The Ashland Public Library has a great romantic romance novelist event, and it's outdoors, and it's a whole day long, and I'll be there too, and so will Megan Frampton and Caroline Linden, so historical writers. And Sandra Kitt will be there too, who was also a trailblazer. So you can join us there. We'll put ticket information in show notes for everyone, but you can get your copies of all your favorite Loretta Chase books signed.

Loretta Chase 01:03:40 / #: Yes, I'm looking forward to that. I did it last fall and it was so fabulous.

Sarah MacLean 01:03:44 / #: I'm looking forward to it too.

Loretta Chase 01:03:46 / #: So Sarah, you're going to have a great time. You're going to have a great time.

Sarah MacLean 01:03:50 / #: I will hopefully not have COVID this year.

Loretta Chase 01:03:51 / #: Don't have that again.

Sarah MacLean 01:03:53 / #: I'm going to try my best. Loretta, this was amazing. You are always amazing. I love hearing you talk.

Loretta Chase 01:04:03 / #: It's wonderful talking to you both. It really is. You have just such a great sensibility and sensitivity about the genre and about the authors. It's really a pleasure. Thank you.

Sarah MacLean 01:04:20 / #: Listen, it was special. It just came to her fully formed like Athena.

Jennifer Prokop 01:04:27 / #: Or like J.R. Ward. I'm also fascinated by the dichotomy between the way Lord of Scoundrels came to her, and then she didn't say it, but I would imagine that then struggling with writer's block would be all that more painful if you'd had that kind of experience, right?

Sarah MacLean 01:04:45 / #: Yeah, presumably. I mean, I was really grateful to hear her talk about writer's block, actually. I mean, a lot of this, for those of you listening, you probably got the sense that this was more about the writing this conversation than really I think any of them have been, which was obviously really wonderful for me and for probably every writer out there who's listening. But listening to somebody talk about how they struggle with writer's block is really interesting because as I said in the conversation, we get a lot of questions as writers about writer's block, and the instinct is always to just sort of wave it away and say, "Oh, I don't believe in writer's block. Writer's block isn't real. Just keep pushing." It's not a fun job. It's not that you're blocked, it's just that you have to sit your ass in the chair. And so, it was really good to hear her say, "No, it is real". And for those of us who have gone through serious issues, serious grief, anxiety about the world, it can be debilitating.

Jennifer Prokop 01:05:54 / #: Yeah. Well, and I was also really fascinated to hear that she's essentially grappled with it twice and that it presented in a different way both times, because I think that's the other, what I feel like is sort of that writer's block is just its own thing. It's a thing, and it's like, no, just like anything, it can manifest itself in lots of different ways. And so, one time she just kind of put everything down and walked away from it and just did something totally different. And then, this time, she really is taking the put your butt in the chair and move through it. And I think that that is also probably really great to, because how you have to be able to say to yourself, "This is what I'm struggling with." It's that it looks different than someone else's block, for example, or it looks different the last time I struggled with this. And I think that's got to be really powerful.

Sarah MacLean 01:06:50 / #: Think about the kind of bravery it takes to say, "I am experiencing this thing. It is related to my, in the original case, grief, and to solve this problem, I'm going to walk away, and buy my contract back." I mean, we haven't talked about that. Nobody has talked to us about that, but that does happen. You can't finish. And so, to get out from under it, you pay the publisher back.

Jennifer Prokop 01:07:21 / #: Right, your advance. Right.

Sarah MacLean 01:07:22 / #: And take the book away. But what also just brilliant person she is, I mean, just somebody who clearly thinks so much about the writing. I was not at all surprised when Ellen Edwards said, "Go read Kinsale."

Jennifer Prokop 01:07:44 / #: Of course, we've all, many of us have experienced the way the genre is sort of shamed and the way that people allow themselves to say like, "Oh, I like this." I have a friend who's a reader who mostly read fantasy, and then when she finally said to me, "I like romance too," it came in a very similar way, which was like, I always like those subplots in books, the love story part. So what would it be like to just allow myself to read that part, or write that part.

Sarah MacLean 01:08:23 / #: In Loretta's case, to rewrite those stories and provide them with happily ever afters. Also, what a cool way of coming to it and thinking, I want to write a novel, but I know my brain requires limitations and scope and a strategy, and therefore I'm going to turn to genre.

Jennifer Prokop 01:08:50 / #: Because it's going to give me that structure. Yeah. I thought that was fascinating.

Sarah MacLean 01:08:53 / #: We are releasing this episode much later in time than when we recorded it, but it made me think about what, there was a sort of silly article that floated by and social media yesterday about a person who decided they going to write romance, because clearly that's where the money was. Spoiler alert, there was no money for this particular person because they weren't very good at the job. But what's fascinating is the difference between those two avenues. This was Loretta saying, "I have creativity in me. I have the chops to write a novel, but I just need guidelines because if I don't, I'll never tell a story." And what a cool way of coming to romance, and then dominating it. I mean, also what was wrong with readers in 1995, the Lord of Scoundrels was amazing.

Jennifer Prokop 01:09:57 / #: That also was a year where there were not, I mean now with the rise of self-publishing, literally thousands of books being released a year more than that. Thousands a week, it feels like, a month. So I'm fascinated to think too, what are the books that are coming out now that it's going to take everybody 10 or 12 years to discover? I mean, that's also what I think of as being the best part about romance is things... Don't get me wrong, I think we all know that things can be dated, or you can read an older book that feels dated in a way. But there is something magical about picking up a book from 25 years ago in romance and having it be just as sort of powerfully moving as it was what the year was published.

01:10:49 / #: And I think that could be true of all of genre fiction. People have heard me talk about Jack Reacher. I've been re-listening to Jack Reacher when I drive, and the biggest change is about technology. And so, it's really fascinating to sort of think, well, what are the things that date a book, and when it's historical, especially when it's rooted in historical research, that doesn't get triggered the same way often.

Sarah MacLean 01:11:19 / #: You're absolutely right. I loved a lot of this conversation. I love that she clocked Jayne Ann Krentz's powerful impact on historicals, which we talked a little bit about in the Jayne Ann Krentz Trailblazer episode. But hearing it from the mouth of Loretta Chase, Jayne Ann Krentz became Amanda Quick and gave us all a blueprint for how to write these books differently. It just makes me smile. It makes me really happy that it was all interconnected in such a powerful way.

Jennifer Prokop 01:12:00 / #: Those first Amanda Quicks were late '80s, '88 or '89 maybe.

Sarah MacLean 01:12:07 / #: Yeah, sounds right.

Jennifer Prokop 01:12:08 / #: And Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women was 1992.

Sarah MacLean 01:12:15 / #: Yeah.

Jennifer Prokop 01:12:16 / #: It was both the books and the explicit naming of what romance was trying to achieve.

Sarah MacLean 01:12:25 / #: Yes.

Jennifer Prokop 01:12:26 / #: And I was also really fascinated here to talk about that kind of pop culture book. I can't remember the name of it now, but talking, like the way people talk to each other. I remember reading that book. I remember it wasn't quite like Men Are From Mars, Women or from Venus, like that old dumb thing. And it was really fascinating I think also to think too just about, and we say this all the time, romance is so responsive to what is going on in society, and it was really interesting to hear Loretta name some of those things really explicitly.

Sarah MacLean 01:13:01 / #: She's remarkable. If you have not read a Loretta Chase book, now is your chance. You should read Lord of Scoundrels and then go back and listen to the Deep dive episode that we did. We'll put links in show notes, or go off and read Mr. Impossible set in Egypt. And then, do yourself a favor, give yourself a treat, and watch Brendan Frazier's Mummy and know why romance Twitter.

Jennifer Prokop 01:13:28 / #: Sarah, can I confess something?

Sarah MacLean 01:13:31 / #: Yeah.

Jennifer Prokop 01:13:31 / #: I've never seen that movie.

Sarah MacLean 01:13:34 / #: Jennifer.

Jennifer Prokop 01:13:36 / #: Wait, what year did it come out? Could someone-

Sarah MacLean 01:13:38 / #: 1999.

Jennifer Prokop 01:13:41 / #: Okay.

Sarah MacLean 01:13:41 / #: I know you and I have a little thing coming, a little thing that actually might have already been announced, but if it has not already been announced, we have this little thing happening and maybe a rewatch of The Mummy is a thing that we can do.

Jennifer Prokop 01:13:54 / #: A rewatch for you, a watch-watch for me.

Sarah MacLean 01:13:56 / #: A watch-watch for you. Maybe we should have B and her books join us.

Jennifer Prokop 01:14:02 / #: I'm writing this down on my... Look, I have a little pad of paper everybody, and it says bad ideas. And I write things down that are good ideas.

Sarah MacLean 01:14:10 / #: Oh, it's ironic.

Jennifer Prokop 01:14:11 / #: It is. This note paper does not boss me around. The Mummy. That's a great idea.

Sarah MacLean 01:14:19 / #: You will delight in it because it is part of our mutual favorite genre, beautiful people blowing things up.

Jennifer Prokop 01:14:28 / #: I mean, yeah, hello. I mean, I'm sorry, we should be talking about Loretta Chase, but she wouldn't mind. Loretta would understand, I think.

Sarah MacLean 01:14:36 / #: I mean, she wrote a whole book based on it. So I think she's okay.

Jennifer Prokop 01:14:39 / #: God, I love those Brennan Frazier movies. I love the one where he's trapped underground with his fusty parents because they think nuclear war is coming.

Sarah MacLean 01:14:48 / #: I know that one.

Jennifer Prokop 01:14:49 / #: And then he pops out onto the surface in modern times and it is hilarious. It's so good.

Sarah MacLean 01:14:56 / #: I mean, he was a treat.

Jennifer Prokop 01:14:59 / #: Yeah. And he's like a great swing dancer, but you know what I mean? And that was like when swing was really popular.

Sarah MacLean 01:15:04 / #: Cutie pie.

Jennifer Prokop 01:15:06 / #: It was, oh my God, I can't remember the title. It's great.

Sarah MacLean 01:15:08 / #: The way I wept when he won the Oscar this year and gave a speech that was just about still being here, just still being here along with the guy from Everything Everywhere All At Once, who was also in Indiana Jones and Goonies. These are, look, our childhood.

Jennifer Prokop 01:15:27 / #: Yeah, I think I loved listening to Loretta Chase. I especially really like one of my favorite questions is what is the hallmark of your books. And I loved her answer. In particular, the answer about, I always assume my readers are smarter than me. I pledge to never write down to them. And I think romance readers know. I think we know when that's the case because we are so fine-tuned, so calibrated to hear that those discordant notes of when someone is trying, as you said at the beginning, right to market, I can make money here. These people I can make money off of versus these people have a similar interest in the same stories as me, and I want to write books for them.

Sarah MacLean 01:16:18 / #: And also, when she said that it made me realize that, I mean, and this is not just a hallmark of historicals, but it is a hallmark of historicals that often historical writer, that is something that happens in historicals, where we sort of trust the reader to come along with us on this ride, and we're going to show you the world, and you're going to know the history, and you're going to know what's happening. And if you don't, it's going to be okay. God, she just made me, every time I talk to Loretta, I just feel good about writing historicals. I feel like it's nice to be sort of even remotely in the room breathing the air of someone like her.

Jennifer Prokop 01:17:01 / #: Yeah. Well, it sounds like you guys are going to have a great time.

Sarah MacLean 01:17:04 / #: Oh, yeah. So come see us in... Oh, gosh. We have to make sure this gets out before then.

Jennifer Prokop 01:17:10 / #: It's on my bad ideas list, don't you worry.

Sarah MacLean 01:17:12 / #: Oh, all right. Good. So this will be out, it will probably be in the next couple of weeks, this event in Boston. And we hope that you'll join us.

Jennifer Prokop 01:17:24 / #: Thanks for having us, everybody. Thanks for having us in your ear holes. And thanks to Loretta Chase for just being... That was a really inspiring conversation. I loved it.

Sarah MacLean 01:17:33 / #: God, for making me just want to put on a murder dress every day.

Jennifer Prokop 01:17:37 / #: Every day. What a gift.

Sarah MacLean 01:17:41 / #: All right. Goodbye, my friends.

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S05, trailblazers Jennifer Prokop S05, trailblazers Jennifer Prokop

S05.30: Christine Feehan: Trailblazer

This week, we’re sharing our fantastic conversation with trailblazer Christine Feehan, an undeniable force in the rise of paranormal romance in the early 2000s. We discuss the genesis of her work, the way she builds her far-reaching worlds, her relationship to readers, her heroes, her sex scenes, and the long and winding path of her career.

Our conversation covers a lot of ground—personal, professional, paranormal and powerful, and we’re so grateful to Christine Feehan for making time for Fated Mates. You’re going to love this one, Firebirds.

Transcript

Next week, our first read along of 2023 is Tracy MacNish’s Stealing Midnight—we’ve heard the calls from our gothic romance readers and we’re delivering with this truly bananas story, in which the hero is dug out of a grave and delivered, barely alive, to the heroine. Get ready. You can find Stealing Midnight (for $1.99!) at Amazon, B&N, Kobo, or Apple Books.

Show Notes

Welcome to Christine Feehan, author of almost 100 romance novels. Her next book, Ghostly Game, is part of the Ghostwalker series and will be released May 2, 2023.

PEOPLE : editor Alicia Condon at Dorchester and now Kensington, and editor Cindy Hwang at Berkley.

BOOKS: Freckles and The Harvester by Gene Stratton Porter, Louisa May Alcott, The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum, Mary Janice Davidson, Gift of Fire and Gift of Gold by Jayne Ann Krentz, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Beekeeper’s Apprentice by Laurie R. King.

Books Mentioned This Episode

Sponsors

Goldie Thomas, author of The Rake and the Fake
Available now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, or Apple Books
and
Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies
Visit microdose.com and use the code FATEDMATES
for 30% off and free shipping on your order.

TRANSCRIPT

Christine Feehan 00:00:00 / #:
I'm not somebody who will ever cut and paste a love scene. It's a different couple and so, they react differently to each other and to whatever situation is going on. And I don't get embarrassed. It's just part of life, and I put that in. And part of the reason for that, and I know this is going to sound crazy, but so many girls that had had these terrible things happen to them would be very promiscuous, but they never felt anything. And I would say it's because you don't have a good partner. You're not in love with your partner. He's not doing anything for you, so I wanted them to know what good sex was. And writers should realize that the words they put down touch people. And you don't know who you're going to touch and you don't know what you say, what it's going to do to somebody.

Jennifer Prokop 00:01:11 / #:
That was the voice of Christine Feehan, paranormal author, extraordinaire, author of over 100 books and just a superstar of the genre and has been for decades.

Sarah MacLean 00:01:26 / #:
Her first book, Dark Prince, came out in 1999, right at the very beginning of the paranormal boom that we talk about. So, we talk to Christine about her life, how she came to romance, how she came to writing paranormals, and how she continues to write in this subgenre that we all love and wish there was more of.

Jennifer Prokop 00:01:50 / #:
Welcome to Fated Mates, everyone. I'm Jennifer Prokop, a romance reader and editor.

Sarah MacLean 00:01:55 / #:
And I'm Sarah MacLean. I read romance novels and I write them.

Jennifer Prokop 00:02:00 / #:
And without further ado, here's our conversation with Christine Feehan.

Sarah MacLean 00:02:06 / #:
Perfect. So thank you so much, Christine, for joining us. We're very excited, in large, part because it feels like you really came to romance in an interesting time and place and way. And so, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how you found romance as a reader and then, again as a writer, or was it simultaneous?

Christine Feehan 00:02:32 / #:
Actually, it wasn't simultaneous at all. I started reading when I was very, very young, at a very young age and started writing when I was very young. The minute I could put sentences together, I started making up stories and I would write them down the minute I could, when I could put sentences together. And I think the first time I ever read a romance, I found these old, old books by Gene Stratton Porter, The Harvester and Freckles and those. And I realized there was kind of this romance thing going, and I found it really intriguing. I was probably 10 or even younger. I read books way over my head-

Sarah MacLean 00:03:32 / #:
Us too.

Jennifer Prokop 00:03:32 / #:
Us too. No problem.

Sarah MacLean 00:03:32 / #:
One of us.

Christine Feehan 00:03:37 / #:
And then, I started looking for anything I could read that might have some sort of a connection between a girl and a guy, because I wanted a happy ending or a happy anything involved in it. And so, that sort of started me down that path of looking for something happy in the book all the time, so that was sort of my intro to romance. And I found Louise May Alcott, of course, and read everything that she wrote, and I would read that to my grandmother whenever she was ill. I would sit and read to her, and then later, different ones that kind of inspired me for different reasons. Actually, The Bourne Identity, I liked the fact that they worked together. They were equal partners. People I think mostly saw the movie. They didn't really read that book the way it should have been read, but without her, he wouldn't have made it. She really was his equal partner in that book and I loved that. I really read that a couple of times to see how he made that happen and I really liked that. That was one of them.

Sarah MacLean 00:05:12 / #:
That doesn't surprise me at all, that the Bourne Identity is a text for you. I mean, it makes perfect sense now as a Feehan reader.

Christine Feehan 00:05:22 / #:
Yeah. And then, one really made an impact on me, probably that opened up the whole paranormal world for me, and I read it very early on was a Gift of Fire and Gift of Gold by Jayne Ann Krentz. And I forget how old I was when I read that, but all of a sudden, it was like it opened this whole world to me and I thought, "This is really what I want to write." Plus, I realized that my hero could be flawed and my villain could... I really like that the villain was rounded out so much.

00:06:11 / #:
And so, I started studying villains to figure them out. How did they write these villains and how did they become... You liked them and you didn't like... I mean, there were good things about them as well as bad things. How did they get to be who they were? So, I think they all had such an impact on me. One of the biggest impacts on me for all of my writing was Sherlock Holmes. I read Sherlock Holmes so many times that I literally could quote pages of Sherlock Holmes, of his work. And then, another writer was Laurie R. King, the Beekeeper's Apprentice. I thought that was such a fabulous take on... What she did, you would never expect her to put heroin with him and how she managed to make that work. That was an interesting pairing for me.

Sarah MacLean 00:07:24 / #:
So, at what point during this kind of reading, obviously, you've been an avid reader forever, did you start thinking, "I think I can maybe do this?"

Christine Feehan 00:07:36 / #:
I never did. I always wrote. I always wrote. I had hundreds of manuscripts under my bed. I'd write them and throw them, write them and throw them. I just wrote all the time. It was sort of a compulsion for me. I could not write, I had to write. I had so many stories in my head, I did not think about publishing them. Other people had movie stars and rock stars that they would scream and yell and, "Oh, my God. They're so wonderful. No, for me, it was writers. And so, I never looked at myself and thought I could ever be a writer like they could be, because I kind of worshiped those writers. They were amazing. My first job was in a library, and I would just read every book that I could in that library.

Jennifer Prokop 00:08:28 / #:
Living the dream. Well, it's, the other thing that's interesting though about that kind of list of books you named is I think one of the hallmarks of your style is an interest in the paranormal, but not necessarily... Even though the Carpathian series is very much about vampires, but like Jayne Ann Krentz, actually. Like telepathy and what the brain is capable of, so has that also always been interesting to you?

Christine Feehan 00:08:59 / #:
Absolutely. I research so much, and my belief really, is even with vampires, if you look at every society all over the world, you look at what their beliefs are going back hundreds of years, and all of them have something like that in their background. And where does it come from? You have to start thinking if every culture has something like that in it, where does it come from? And if every country pretty much has done these experiments with telepathy and with all these other things, why are they doing them? And after a while, you start getting these answers. You start hitting on things that, "Oh, this did work for somebody. This did work here. This did work there." And after so much research, you're catching up with the future things that they're already doing. Like my Ghost Walker series, I have a hard time keeping ahead of the game, and I research very hard to do that. And I always have primary sources, but it looks, when you write it, like it's way out there, but it isn't.

Sarah MacLean 00:10:29 / #:
Publishing wasn't even on the horizon, it sounds like. And I've done my research, I know you have a large family. So, can you give us a sense of Christine's world, at this point? How does it all fit together?

Christine Feehan 00:10:42 / #:
I taught martial arts for years and women's self-defense. Well, not just women's, I mean, I taught men too, but that was my world. I surrounded myself with that 26, 27 years of that. And I took in a lot of abused children, which you can see in my books and worked with unwed mothers and I had a complete whirl there. Writing was my escape, and when I took my kids to their gymnastics and their sports, I lived out in the country. I lived way out, away from things. So, I had to drive them and I would sit at their practices and write. That's what I did.

Sarah MacLean 00:11:40 / #:
Anybody with kids in sports has done exactly this.

Christine Feehan 00:11:43 / #:
Yeah. I didn't own a computer, I didn't own a laptop. There was no R.W.A., there was none of that. I didn't even know about R.W.A., I just wrote my stories and I did them for me. That was my escape. That was the one thing that I did for myself. And if the kids watched television at night, that's what I did, is I wrote. I wasn't interested in television. We played Dungeons and Dragons, and I told stories to the kids. That was our pastime and our fun together.

Sarah MacLean 00:12:26 / #:
So, at what point did it become... How did it happen? I mean, how did you become Christine Feehan published author?

Christine Feehan 00:12:36 / #:
The thing was that there came a time when I became very ill and my doctor said to me, "You cannot do martial arts anymore." And unfortunately, children want food.

Sarah MacLean 00:12:56 / #:
They do. Generally.

Christine Feehan 00:12:58 / #:
I convinced the, especially the boys, that they did not need to eat and the girls still wanted clothes. So, I had to find a way to feed them and to keep clothes on their back and to pay the bills. And I was working a couple of jobs, but it was minimum wage, and I was like, "Okay, this is not going to work." And my girlfriend said to me, "Send one of your books in." And I said, "It doesn't work like that." One, it was kind of terrifying. I didn't think I really wanted to send... The thought of giving away one of my stories was not a good idea to me, and I also told her they aren't taking anything with vampires in it. And at that point, I had been writing my Carpathian stories.

Sarah MacLean 00:13:56 / #:
That's so true. A paranormal was unsellable, we were told, in the nineties. And so, I guess I have two questions. One is, was it just that you thought, "I'm writing vampires and I'm not reading vampires? There are no vampires to be read. There was Anne Rice and now there is no one else?" Or did somebody tell you, "Oh, you can't sell vampires?"

Christine Feehan 00:14:23 / #:
Yes. I was told that... My friend, a girl girlfriend of mine was writing to sell, and she wanted to go to this thing in San Francisco that later I found out was an R.W.A.

Sarah MacLean 00:14:41 / #:
Sure.

Jennifer Prokop 00:14:42 / #:
Oh, Okay.

Christine Feehan 00:14:44 / #:
Which I didn't know. And she didn't want to go alone, so she asked me to go with her. And I said sure. And there were all these people in there, and I was a little embarrassed because they would say things like, "Well, I've been working on my office for four months, no book." And then somebody else said, "I've been working on my book for 14 years, and I've been working on my book for... I don't know how many..."

Sarah MacLean 00:15:12 / #:
God, this is the entire experience of R.W.A., honestly.

Christine Feehan 00:15:16 / #:
And this went on and on. And then, they get to me and I'm like, "I don't know. I have 300 manuscripts [inaudible 00:15:24 / #]." And a woman who was running the whole thing, later, she came up to me and she's like, "You need an agent." And I, at that time, was not interested in selling and I told her that. And I said, "Well, the latest thing I'm writing are..." She asked me what I was writing and I said romance. And I said, "But they have vampires in them." And she goes, "Oh, those aren't selling. You can't get an editor to even look at them."

Sarah MacLean 00:16:04 / #:
This week's episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by Goldie Thomas, author of the Rake and the Fake.

Jennifer Prokop 00:16:10 / #:
Sarah, this is a historical romance and it's a debut and the first in The Husband material series. This is a book that's really going to appeal to all of our listeners who love Tessa Dare and Joanna Shupe. And so, we have Charlotte, a seamstress employed at London's most renowned [inaudible 00:16:28 / #], and she is very aware of the class differences between her and the people that come in and partake of her services. And she runs a foul of Nicholas, a charming but badly behaved viscount, and his parents are insisting that he marry as soon as possible. After a maiden Manhattan mix up Nicholas's mother mistakes Charlotte, for this woman who she thinks Nicholas should marry, and there's just all of these shenanigans that happen. This book really deals with big class issues head on. And so, Charlotte, rather than being enamored with the excessive wealth that she is now seeing in real life is, instead like, "Wait, we really need to fix this." So Nicholas, Charlotte have to really figure out how they can be together given this huge difference between them.

Sarah MacLean 00:17:24 / #:
First of all, this sounds like a terrific read. I love it when historical romances really tackle class differences. And you can read The Rake and the Fake by Goldie Thomas right now in print or ebook, wherever you get your books. Thanks as always to Goldie Thomas for sponsoring the episode. Are the 300 manuscripts under your bed also paranormal adjacent?

Christine Feehan 00:17:53 / #:
No. They weren't at that time. No.

Sarah MacLean 00:17:56 / #:
So, how did we get to dark prints?

Christine Feehan 00:17:59 / #:
Well, at that time, I had quite a few children. My oldest son was in the Navy, and he came home to visit. I had two daughters who were pregnant, and he was helping out, building a little apartment for one of them. And he came home. He was with a friend, and he came home for lunch. He had a motorcycle, and I made him lunch and we were laughing and talking, and he went out the door and I said, "Did you put on sunscreen?" And he said, "Oh, mom, you're going to be saying that to me when I'm 90." And I laughed and said, "You bet I will." And he walked out the door, and five minutes later, maybe it was five minutes later, no more than that, the phone rang and my future son-in-law gets this call. He was on for if there was an accident. And his brother called him and said, "We've got a call. I'm coming to pick you up." And then, the neighbor called me and said, "I think your son was hit." And I said, "That's impossible."

00:19:26 / #:
But it was him and he didn't make it. And one of my daughters was... Both of them were due, and there was a birthday party I'd been planning the next day for my youngest child and a wedding I was planning. And it's a very interesting thing when you lose a child, and this is for any trauma that people suffer, life goes on all around you, it just keeps going. There's no way to stop it. You can't put the brakes on, and I had to keep planning a wedding. I had to keep two girls who were giving birth. I had a very small child who expected to have a birthday, and I didn't feel anything. I couldn't remember people talking to me, conversations.

00:20:45 / #:
And it lasted forever. It went on forever. I mean, I did everything I was supposed to do. I went to my kids' schools, I participated in everything that I was supposed to do, but I didn't feel anything. And it went on for so long and I thought, "I have to find a way back." And we always played Dungeons and Dragons together, and I always talked to him about vampires, made-up stories. And one of the things we talked about was, why would somebody want to give up your soul? And the more I thought about it, the more I thought, "If you have no feelings, if you can't feel anything and nothing can touch you..." And I honestly felt like I couldn't see in color anymore. Everything felt so dull. And I thought, "I have to find a way back to the people I love."

00:21:54 / #:
And that's when I started writing dark prints, and I started coming up with this idea that these men had to find that person that could make them feel again and see in color again. And that was my way back to... You never get over it. There's no way to get over it. But I've spoken to many, many people who've had many losses or had much trauma, and everybody has their own way of dealing with it. And that was mine. We shared something, it was Calvert's and I, we shared that. And my youngest son... He's not my youngest, but Brian, he always played Dungeon Masters with a Dragon. Anyway, he played with us and we would talk a lot about it together and eventually, it really helped me. And so, developing that world became very therapeutic for me. And so, that's how that world came about. And it's surprising when people read it. Some people have that, it has that same effect on them. They feel that same way, which I find interesting, that some people get it this, that have suffered loss, where other people have no idea.

Sarah MacLean 00:23:44 / #:
Yeah, but I imagine when a book comes like that and from such a place, it's impossible to imagine. First of all, it's all packed in there because when you write, that's how it goes, whatever you're living is in there. But also, I'm so moved by this story because the Carpathians are... That series is never-ending, right? It's 38 books now. And so, do you feel like every time you go back to them, that you're going back to a similar place you're mining that same love, that same world?

Christine Feehan 00:24:28 / #:
Sure. It's funny how grief will hit you at times, where it comes out nowhere. I mean, it's been a long time for my son. I've lost a granddaughter, I've lost a grandson and all of that is very difficult. You try very hard to, I don't know how to explain it, keep going as the world keeps going. But anybody who's lost parents, anybody, at times it just suddenly comes out of nowhere, and you don't know when it's going to happen.

00:25:23 / #:
But when I write, I can feel that connection, especially in the Carpathian world with Calvert, and it makes me feel very close to him again. And also, there's so many issues in those books, women's issues, miscarriages that women have. And over the years, with so many different friends and so many different young women that have had terrible things happen to them that I've dealt with through martial arts or through other things, I've been able to talk about those things. And then, had women be able to read about them, and then that helps them in their lives. So, I've been grateful to be able to have that opportunity when I no longer can do hands-on help.

Jennifer Prokop 00:26:32 / #:
So it's interesting to me too... Probably one of my favorite of your series is Torpedo Ink, and those are characters that are really steeped in trauma. And I mean, that's another thing that sort of ties your books together. People experience terrible loss or grief or trauma, and then this connection is like, how do they survive? Especially can they, through this, access almost parts of themselves, they didn't know that existed. So, when you talk about readers contacting you, is this something that... Like they write you letters, you get emails, how do you connect with readers who are also experiencing this world? Like the emotional... Your worlds are kind of terrible worlds, but people find each other in them. So, how do your readers come to you?

Christine Feehan 00:27:38 / #:
Well, okay, Torpedo Ink is actually my most difficult series to write. When I took in children, I found that boys were treated way differently than girls. When they're molested, they oftentimes are not given counseling. Sometimes they're rejected from their family. The fathers don't want them, and they often are like, especially if they're a little bit older, it's like, "Oh, hey, you should be happy," instead of... It's traumatizing for them, but nobody wants to even talk about it with a boy. And so, I promised myself that someday I was going to address that issue. And I didn't honestly realize when I started looking at files, what I was really getting myself into. Because you have to talk with professionals and you're looking at some file and you're reading this horrible thing that you don't even want to look at anymore. And then, you talk to a professional and you say, "All right, this happened to them.

00:28:59 / #:
What's going to happen to them as an adult?" And he's like, "Oh, he's not going to be normal. His sexual life is not going to be normal." So now, you're going to have to write about this and try to find a happy ending for him. Because to me, I want to make whoever's had anything close to that experience feel hope. That's what you're trying to do, is say, "There's hope for you. Don't give up." And most of the time I get letters. There's been a few times when somebody has come personally to me, when I'm at a convention or something, they've asked to meet with me, and I've talked to them. Most of the time it's a letter and 99% of the time, and it will start out, "Please continue to read this, but I was going to kill myself. And then, I read this book." And oftentimes, especially Torpedo Ink, I think, "I can't write another one of these. I just can't do it." And then, I don't know why I get a letter like that, and I think, "Oh, my God, Christine, now you're going to have to write..."

Jennifer Prokop 00:30:22 / #:
Keep doing it.

Christine Feehan 00:30:23 / #:
"Now you're going to have to write another one." And it's interesting because not everyone gets that those books are about trauma. They don't see it. They don't. And that's always interesting to me, that not everyone gets what the book is actually about. I try to put on there to be careful about reading it. There's triggers for people... But people sometimes just don't see that.

Sarah MacLean 00:30:55 / #:
One of the things that I keep coming back to as you're talking is Jen and I talk a lot on the podcast about how we bemoan the way paranormal has faded over the last decade. And one of the reasons why is because it feels like there seems to be so much more anger and confusion and frustration, and all the things that are happening in the world right now. Paranormal, in so many ways, makes us look at those traumatic or those dangerous or angry or wicked things and face them.

00:31:41 / #:
You said this is about hope, and we always talk about romance as the literature of hope. That is the promise. So, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about, as somebody who we really do think is without you, paranormal would not be here in the way that it is. How does paranormal... How did coming to paranormal and writing paranormal and building the sub-genre happen during that time? I mean, obviously, you told the remarkable story about how the Carpathians came to be, but you've never gone away. You've never left that paranormal world. Even when you do leave it, there's always a vibe, right?

Christine Feehan 00:32:29 / #:
Yeah. Well, because for me, I know that other people don't really believe so much in all those things, but I think the world is so big and there's so many interesting unsolved mysteries in it, and I can't stop doing research. I'm like the research nut, and I find everything so fascinating. And I don't necessarily... I know we use the word paranormal, but I always think there's so much out there. And so, to me, I just think maybe it's really all true, and we haven't caught up with it yet. So, to me, it's just extending my imagination and then, trying to find reality in it. And I try to put the book at least 80% facts. I mean, twisting those facts into my fictional world. And then, just a small amount of the paranormal so that when people read it, they're like, "Oh, this could happen. This could be." When I did Lightning Game, most of that was reality. I mean, it's amazing what they're doing with lightning, and you look at it and go, "Holy moly."

Sarah MacLean 00:34:07 / #:
So, could you talk a little bit about that paranormal? I mean, I'm using paranormal now, respecting what you just said, but at paranormal as a subgenre of romance. During that boom, where it just felt... I mean, it just felt like everyone was writing these kind of big, expansive worlds with these heroes who were just larger than life and these heroines who just could match them step for step. What was going on there? Are you able to look back on that time and go, "Oh, this is why we were all doing this thing together." Or, "This was why readers were really drawn to us?"

Christine Feehan 00:34:59 / #:
I think that different times call for different things. People are, at times, they need certain things in their lives, and they're looking for heroes and they're looking for things that make them happy. Unfortunately, I don't honestly know what's happening right now, where everybody seems so angry and weird with each other. It's so strange to me. I don't understand that, but I'm getting kind of old. But I think everybody's imagination was really big and everybody at that time really accepted it. And they went all out and readers were like, "Hey, what do you have for me? I'm willing to read it." And they went for it. So, I think that was a really good time, and people were in a good place. And as things started to crumble, the economy and whatever, then I think that things sort of went downhill. And also, when you get too many people doing the same thing, it runs out. You can only do so many of the same types, and then it gets... There's a lot of repetition. And maybe towards the end, there might have been, I don't know.

Sarah MacLean 00:36:50 / #:
Were there other writers who you were friendly with, who you were in your group, were inspiring you during that time?

Christine Feehan 00:37:02 / #:
Not in my group. I had a very core group, but I will tell you, I read Mary Janice Davidson, and she made me laugh so hard. I am not the best at writing humor. When I read her, I would laugh so hard and I would just about die. She made me laugh so much. There were certain ones that you'd pick them up and to be honest, I didn't read much in my own genre because I didn't want to step on somebody's voice, but I couldn't help it with her. Every time she had a book come out, I'd go get it, because she just was so funny. But like I say, I don't write very humorously, and I try, but my humor falls flat.

Jennifer Prokop 00:38:01 / #:
So, did you join R.W.A., you mentioned, sort of not knowing what it was? Was that something that-

Christine Feehan 00:38:09 / #:
I had to, at one point, because my house... I was with Dorchester at the time when I first... They were the only ones who would read my book and then they bought it.

Sarah MacLean 00:38:19 / #:
Who was your editor there?

Christine Feehan 00:38:21 / #:
Alicia Condon. Alicia Condon. Okay. Okay. And she was wonderful. She was.

Sarah MacLean 00:38:26 / #:
And she acquired you at Dorchester?

Christine Feehan 00:38:28 / #:
She did, yes. And people always said things about Dorchester, but they gave new authors a chance when nobody else would.

Sarah MacLean 00:38:37 / #:
And took such risk in terms of the content of the books. I mean, I was saying to Jen before we started that one of my very favorite... I write historicals, and one of my very favorite historicals is The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie, which, the hero... It's such a different kind of historical, and I just can't... I think it benefited from Dorchester.

Christine Feehan 00:39:03 / #:
I think that they did a really good job at getting people seen when nobody else would even look at them. Not one other house would've... Well, they wouldn't...

Sarah MacLean 00:39:17 / #:
Sure. Vampires, right?

Christine Feehan 00:39:19 / #:
Right, they wouldn't look at it. And she did, and she picked it up, so that was pretty amazing of her to do that.

Sarah MacLean 00:39:29 / #:
And then, you were with Dorchester until Dorchester folded?

Christine Feehan 00:39:34 / #:
I was already being looked at by Berkley. Cindy Wong had already made an offer for me, and I've been with her ever since. She's been my editor for years and years and years. So yeah, I was already with Berkley at that point, but they had a bunch of my books still.

Sarah MacLean 00:39:58 / #:
Because you're such a fast writer. Now, were you build... Now, how was that working? Were you pulling things out from under the bed or...

Christine Feehan 00:40:06 / #:
No, no.

Sarah MacLean 00:40:07 / #:
The bad manuscripts are still under the bed.

Christine Feehan 00:40:09 / #:
No, because the ones under the bed were not polished and they weren't that good.

Sarah MacLean 00:40:15 / #:
I don't believe it, but okay.

Christine Feehan 00:40:16 / #:
No, they're not that good.

Sarah MacLean 00:40:20 / #:
So, because you're so prolific as well, what is it? Almost a hundred books, is that right?

Christine Feehan 00:40:27 / #:
Yes, very close to a hundred books.

Sarah MacLean 00:40:30 / #:
And so, you are really... I mean, you still writing really quickly. You're writing at a self-published pace.

Christine Feehan 00:40:39 / #:
I actually am slowing down a little bit so I can go visit occasionally. Go see my mom, and not my mom, my sisters, occasionally. I have a lot of sisters.

Sarah MacLean 00:40:53 / #:
And do you feel like... You have a big fam... You have a large number of children, a lot of sisters. Do you feel like that those kinds of relationships are part of why you have been drawn so much to Pax? I mean, big communities of characters.

Christine Feehan 00:41:13 / #:
Yeah, I've always loved being in a big family.

Jennifer Prokop 00:41:18 / #:
This week's episode of Faded Mates is sponsored by Lumi Labs, creators of microdose gummies.

Sarah MacLean 00:41:24 / #:
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Jennifer Prokop 00:41:57 / #:
For me too.

Sarah MacLean 00:41:58 / #:
Pain, anxiety. Eric takes them for creativity and a general kind of joyfulness across the day. He said to me the other day, "You know what the thing is about these gummies? You take one and you just like, an hour and a half later, just feel like, "I feel like I'm in a good mood."

Jennifer Prokop 00:42:17 / #:
Yes. And listen, we all need that these days. If they didn't put me to sleep, they would definitely help me feel like I was in a good mood. Anyway, microdosing is available nationwide, and we have all tried these gummies, and we think you might enjoy them too, if they're something you're interested in.

Sarah MacLean 00:42:37 / #:
So, you can go to microdose.com and use the code Fated Mates to get 30% on your first order. They have all different kinds of flavors you can try. I'm a particular fan of cotton candy. Lately, I also like one that's orange flavored, so you should try, check it out, give it a try. And thanks, as always, to Lumi Labs for sponsoring this week's episode. Another interesting hallmark of your career is that you have several, very long-running series that you're essentially writing concurrently. And so, this is unusual. A lot of people will start and finish a series and you have a bunch that just are kind of continuing. So, what's your process for deciding what's next, keeping it all straight? That seems like a huge job.

Christine Feehan 00:43:40 / #:
It's very strange, my brain, how it works. A character will come to me and say, "I want my story told." And I can't write... I couldn't write two Carpathian stories in a row because I'd be bored with that world. So, I write that story and then, while I'm writing that story, all of a sudden, another character from another world will jump into my head and start pushing at me. And I have tell it to be quiet. Like, "It's not your turn yet. Wait till I'm finished." And then, that one will will... A lot of times now, because I'll have a contract and they'll want the stories in a certain order order. And so, I had to train my brain to say, "It's going to be like this." And if they mess up the order on me, it's actually difficult now, because my brain would be like, "We have to do it this way."

Jennifer Prokop 00:44:48 / #:
I'm not going to get the titles right, but the head of Torpedo Ink was the husband of the end of the series with all the sisters?

Christine Feehan 00:45:00 / #:
Right, yeah. Mm-hmm.

Jennifer Prokop 00:45:00 / #:
So, when characters intersect in that way, is that a surprise to you?

Christine Feehan 00:45:07 / #:
Because I wasn't planning on publishing Torpedo Ink. I wasn't going to. And when I had that in there, Cindy said to me, "Do you have these other characters..."

Sarah MacLean 00:45:21 / #:
We have this guy.

Christine Feehan 00:45:23 / #:
And I said, "Well, yeah, but I don't think they're something that I could publish because it's a pretty raw, edgy series." And she said, "Well, let me read it." And that's kind of how that ended up getting published.

Sarah MacLean 00:45:40 / #:
We've had several people on who are edited by Cindy, and it sounds like she is one of those editors who is willing to just again, take the risk with you and trust you to move forward.

Christine Feehan 00:45:55 / #:
She will take a risk. Yeah, she will. She's not-

Sarah MacLean 00:45:56 / #:
That's amazing.

Christine Feehan 00:45:57 / #:
She's pretty fearless, and she's not afraid. If I went to her and said, "I'd like to publish this." And it's like out there, she would say, "Go ahead and write it. Let's take a look at it."

Jennifer Prokop 00:46:14 / #:
Have there been other editors, publishers, I don't know, art directors?

Sarah MacLean 00:46:21 / #:
Oh, wait, can we talk about those early covers, first of all?

Jennifer Prokop 00:46:24 / #:
Oh, yeah.

Sarah MacLean 00:46:25 / #:
So, I'm so fascinated but... Listen, I could talk about romance novel covers all day every day. In fact, Jen will tell you, I kind of do, but those early covers, so that first cover of Dark Prints is a clinch. It's like a historical clinch, presumably because no one knew what the heck to do with these books, right?

Christine Feehan 00:46:45 / #:
Right.

Sarah MacLean 00:46:45 / #:
And then, can you walk us through... Are you able to remember or recall how paranormal became... How it started to look the way it did? Why we moved away from those clinches?

Christine Feehan 00:47:01 / #:
Well, there were funny, funny things that happened with some of them.

Sarah MacLean 00:47:05 / #:
I love it.

Christine Feehan 00:47:07 / #:
It was Jacque's book and they put him on the cover, and I said, "Well, this cover his spine." Except that he had, or she had red hair. It was a clinch cover, so they washed the cover red.

Sarah MacLean 00:47:32 / #:
Oh, my gosh. The whole cover?

Christine Feehan 00:47:34 / #:
The whole cover. So he is like sunburned. I called him Lobster Boy after that.

Sarah MacLean 00:47:41 / #:
What book is this?

Christine Feehan 00:47:44 / #:
It was Dark Desire.

Sarah MacLean 00:47:45 / #:
I'm looking it up right now.

Christine Feehan 00:47:48 / #:
So, he literally has... He's red and so-

Sarah MacLean 00:47:53 / #:
I think I know what this is.

Christine Feehan 00:47:55 / #:
I did. I called him Lobster Boy. So, every time anybody would refer to him, I would think, in my head, I'd turn it around and he'd be Lobster Boy.

Sarah MacLean 00:48:03 / #:
Oh, no.

Christine Feehan 00:48:06 / #:
And my girlfriend, one of my friends, she just loved him. She called him Pooky face. She'd be like, "Don't you call my-"

Sarah MacLean 00:48:14 / #:
He's orange.

Christine Feehan 00:48:16 / #:
Yes. He is.

Sarah MacLean 00:48:19 / #:
Everybody look down in your podcast right now. We'll show it to you. Yeah, he's orange.

Christine Feehan 00:48:24 / #:
Yeah.

Sarah MacLean 00:48:26 / #:
How funny.

Christine Feehan 00:48:27 / #:
Yeah. And here's the other thing that happened with that book. This is just a little... So, it starts off with, there was blood in the River of It Running or something, the first sentence. And I had worked on that first chapter a million ways, and he's insane. I mean, when he comes awake, he's totally insane. And if you don't know what happened to him, you would hate that guy because he's an ass. So, you have to start out with him and knowing what happened to him. And I think I wrote that first chapter 40 Different Ways. Well, when they got the book, they're like, "We have to change this first chapter because they have to know that it's a romance, and you can't start out this way." I'm like, "No, I'm not changing it."

Sarah MacLean 00:49:25 / #:
How funny.

Christine Feehan 00:49:27 / #:
I go, "Toss the book." "We're not tossing the book."

Sarah MacLean 00:49:36 / #:
Amazing. No. And then, when we first got on with you and you said, "Well, I don't know. Am I a trailblazer?" Christine, Christine...

Christine Feehan 00:49:43 / #:
Here's why.

Sarah MacLean 00:49:44 / #:
This is how paranormals begin, now with the heroes in trauma and then, you just sort of ride the wave until you get to the kissing parts.

Christine Feehan 00:49:54 / #:
I finally just said, "You know that Clinch cover? They're going to know it's a romance."

Sarah MacLean 00:50:00 / #:
Right, exactly. I think they'll know. So, at what point did it feel like... I mean, this is obviously a market thing. This is how the sausage is made a little, but when does everybody realize, "Oh, paranormals need a different look"? Is that just because it started to become... So the market just became more exciting?

Christine Feehan 00:50:21 / #:
I really think when I moved over to Berkley, I think that the marketing people at Berkley kind of-

Jennifer Prokop 00:50:32 / #:
Figured that out.

Christine Feehan 00:50:33 / #:
Yeah, they were the ones. For me, for my team, they were the ones who kind of said, "Okay, we're going to do this differently." Interesting enough, in Germany, my books, all of them, even the Ghost Walkers, all of them have bats on the cover.

Jennifer Prokop 00:50:57 / #:
Okay. Sure, sure.

Sarah MacLean 00:50:57 / #:
It's a can of soup, right?

Jennifer Prokop 00:51:00 / #:
I know. I'm like, "Does Saphian mean Bat and German?" I don't know.

Sarah MacLean 00:51:03 / #:
That's funny.

Christine Feehan 00:51:04 / #:
Maybe. What else?

Sarah MacLean 00:51:05 / #:
Yeah.

Christine Feehan 00:51:07 / #:
They do very well but...

Sarah MacLean 00:51:10 / #:
Hey, listen. If it ain't broke, right?

Jennifer Prokop 00:51:14 / #:
You can tell I really love your books, but one of the things Sarah and I have talked about a lot is romance comes and goes, right? The way that what's popular as a trope, what kind of sub-genres are popular, what kinds of hero archetypes are popular. These things change over time. And right now, the romance hero has changed a lot, but I don't necessarily think that your romance heroes has have changed a lot. So, how do you... I don't know. Do you feel the push of market forces, or it doesn't matter, your readers are...

Christine Feehan 00:51:57 / #:
I don't look at trends and I don't look at that kind of thing at all. I have to go with whatever I'm passionate about and I have to go with whatever character's in my head, and I just hope my readers will love the story and love the characters. I write the best book that I can. I try every single book to improve and give a better story and sometimes, I succeed. I do my best, but there is no way that I can write a story to the market. It's not going to happen. And I know that, so I don't even try.

Sarah MacLean 00:52:41 / #:
Well, what's amazing is you've made a career out of arguably not writing to market. You wrote vampires before vampires were cool. You moved to shifters before everyone else moved to shifters and it's amazing, the inspiration that you give writers is write your truth.

Christine Feehan 00:53:03 / #:
Well, the series that I'm doing, I know it's a bad thing to call it the murder series. I really shouldn't-

Sarah MacLean 00:53:10 / #:
Not for me.

Jennifer Prokop 00:53:13 / #:
I think that might be more to market than we'd like to admit, honestly.

Christine Feehan 00:53:17 / #:
Well, I got into that one because one of my daughters does a lot of climbing. She used to live in Bishop, which is up in the mammoth area near Yosemite. And she knows these women and all of them have these incredible stories. And they all became friends, and they would go climbing together, and I would listen to their stories of where they came from. And then, they have these insane jobs. And I was thinking, "Wow, this is amazing." And one day, they were telling me about this hike they'd gone on, and I thought, "what a perfect place for a serial killer." I'm like, "Okay..." They were all going to go on a hike together and camping. And I said, "Okay, girls, I really want you to start looking around for a place where a serial killer might be hanging out, ready to-"

Jennifer Prokop 00:54:20 / #:
Just report back.

Sarah MacLean 00:54:20 / #:
It's totally fine.

Christine Feehan 00:54:24 / #:
So, after that, I started having the girls, every time they go someplace, do that for me. And the next thing I know, they're taking tasers with them.

Sarah MacLean 00:54:34 / #:
I was going to say they stop hiking. They're done with that now.

Christine Feehan 00:54:38 / #:
I kind of ruined it for them. We're talking murder every time we go to the restaurants.

Sarah MacLean 00:54:48 / #:
So, one of the questions that we often ask is, what's the hallmark of a Christine Feehan romance? When a reader picks up a Christine Feehan novel, one of your nearly-100 of them, what do they know they're going to get?

Christine Feehan 00:55:06 / #:
Well, for sure, they're going to get a happy ending. Absolutely sure they're going to get happy ending. I write, always, about, I think, hope and about finding your own version of family. It doesn't matter what the setting is or what the drama that has been... It's about... Or what I want to say genre, but of course, it's romance, but it could be military, it could be suspense, it could be anything. But set in that, there has to be that hope and the finding of family and that happy ending. That's what you're going to get. That's what you're going to find.

Sarah MacLean 00:56:04 / #:
And we didn't talk about this, but it's also going to be super sexy.

Jennifer Prokop 00:56:08 / #:
Oh, yeah.

Sarah MacLean 00:56:09 / #:
And I feel like we should sort of touch on this because I do feel like for me, those early Feehans were-

Jennifer Prokop 00:56:20 / #:
And the late ones.

Sarah MacLean 00:56:21 / #:
No, no. I mean, for me though, Sarah, when I stumbled upon Christine Feehan in the bookstore, it felt like I'd never read anything like this before. And I wonder, can you talk a little bit about that, about really bringing sex to the genre in a lot of ways? I feel like there was, not that it didn't exist before, but there's something about the Feehan sensuality that is different.

Christine Feehan 00:56:53 / #:
Well, to me, the characters are really real. People have asked me that before. I'm not in the book at all. When I'm writing that book, it really is the characters. I don't plot out the book. So the characters are so real to me that I know everything about them from the time they were little. And so, when they're moving through that story, it's all about them. And they're the ones that are having sex or not having sex or whatever's happening to them.

00:57:33 / #:
And so, I'm not somebody who will ever cut and paste a love scene. You're not going to get the same one because they're always... It's a different couple. And so, they react differently to each other and to whatever situation is going on. And I step back so far when I'm writing that I'm not there, and really, it's almost plays out like it's reality for them. And so, to me, it's just part of life. I don't get embarrassed. It's just part of life, and I put that in. And part of the reason for that, and I know this is going to sound crazy, but so many girls that had had these terrible things happen to them would be very promiscuous, but they never felt anything. And I would say, "It's because you don't have a good partner. You're not in love with your partner. He's not doing anything for you." So, I wanted them to know what good sex was, and if you have a book that you can read when no one's around and you can see what good sex is, then it's... When you have a partner, and I can tell you, this is another thing I get lots of letters.

Sarah MacLean 00:59:16 / #:
Oh, interesting. I believe that.

Christine Feehan 00:59:20 / #:
I even had letters from guys who told me they would not cheat on their wives, military guys, because they realized that their wife was too important to them. And I mean, it's amazing. And writers should realize that the words they put down touch people. And you don't know who you're going to touch, and you don't know what you say, what it's going to do to somebody. I mean, when I write something, I don't know who it's going to affect. But I deliberately did put sex in my books for that reason, because I wanted people to know there is good sex. No, that there is, and you should feel something.

Sarah MacLean 01:00:19 / #:
And I love the way you talk about it, as you are so distant from the book itself, you are just writing the book. And I think that's really what a Feehan... That's why it feels so different as a reader or did. In those early books, they felt transcendent because they did feel intense and passionate in that way, that sort of private way.

Christine Feehan 01:00:46 / #:
Yeah. Now, when I started the Leopard series, that was kind of my nod to erotica. Yeah, erotic wasn't a huge, huge thing then. Now, it kind of is, but it wasn't at the time. And so, I was like, "Okay, I'm going to just do a little bit of that." And that was before to Torpedo Ink. And so, I thought, "Oh, I'll put that in my leopard one because it made sense to go there." But then, I started writing Torpedo Ink and I'm like, "Uh-oh, now I've got two."

Jennifer Prokop 01:01:23 / #:
Yeah. That's hot, everybody. I'm okay with it.

Sarah MacLean 01:01:29 / #:
No, the Leopard series. I mean, I remember coming to the Leopard series and just feeling like nobody had ever done anything like that before.

Jennifer Prokop 01:01:38 / #:
Yeah. So, I think the question we love to end with is... So, it's kind of a two-part question, I guess. One is, there a book that you hear about over and over again from readers? And then, the question we have for you is there a book of yours that's your favorite, the one that you are most proud of?

Christine Feehan 01:01:58 / #:
Well, the one I hear about all the time from Readers is Dark Celebration. Every single person wants me to write that book over and over and over.

Jennifer Prokop 01:02:11 / #:
They can just reread it. They can reread it. Reread it, everybody.

Sarah MacLean 01:02:13 / #:
It slaps every time.

Christine Feehan 01:02:16 / #:
It's so funny.

Sarah MacLean 01:02:17 / #:
And why do you think that is?

Christine Feehan 01:02:19 / #:
I think because it revisits characters they love.

Sarah MacLean 01:02:22 / #:
Yes.

Christine Feehan 01:02:24 / #:
I think that's it.

Sarah MacLean 01:02:25 / #:
It's reader Karen Feeding, right?

Christine Feehan 01:02:28 / #:
So, I think that that's it. What book would I be the most proud of?

Sarah MacLean 01:02:35 / #:
Or the one that's most special to you? People take it in different ways.

Christine Feehan 01:02:41 / #:
Probably the one that's the most special to me is Dark Prince, for obvious reasons. That would probably be the one, I would say.

Sarah MacLean 01:02:49 / #:
Well, thank you for being with us today.

Jennifer Prokop 01:02:51 / #:
This was incredible. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining us and it's really an honor.

Christine Feehan 01:02:59 / #:
I really enjoyed being with you. Thank you for inviting me.

Sarah MacLean 01:03:06 / #:
Every single one of these goes differently.

Jennifer Prokop 01:03:10 / #:
Yeah, it's amazing. I think the thing I liked about our conversation with Christine is how personal it felt. I mean, obviously, not just the stories that she shared, but just you can really feel how reading and writing and thinking about hope and happily ever afters is really something she spent her entire life on. And there's a way that I think that just really came through in that conversation. It was so fascinating.

Sarah MacLean 01:03:39 / #:
Absolutely. She talked a few times about how readers have approached her and talked to her about how special her books are to them and how moving they are and how inspirational and important they are to readers. And every time she told them, I had the same thought, which was, "I think it must be really wonderful to have a conversation, a personal conversation with Christine." She feels like she's present in the moment the whole time, and it was really special.

Jennifer Prokop 01:04:14 / #:
I get very distracted by people. I feel like even in my classroom, I'm kind of constantly doing 800 things at once, but you really feel that she probably is such a great mom and a grandma. You know what I mean? Like the attention that she really gives and the way that she talks about... I mean, I'm fascinated too by people who say, "I am a writer. I've always been a writer. I love writing. There's 300 books under the bed."

Sarah MacLean 01:04:41 / #:
A Compulsive Writer. I love that. The sort of, "I would've written with or without publishing." I loved that story about how she got dragged up to an R.W.A. meeting and everybody was like, "Well, I've been working on the same thing for a while." And she's like, "I have 300 books, but I never intended to do this."

Jennifer Prokop 01:05:00 / #:
I also think that that goes hand in hand then with not really worrying about "the market". So, when you are writing in that way and you've had success writing in that way, and you've had readers respond to you in that way, then I think it's really powerful to see someone stay the course.

Sarah MacLean 01:05:24 / #:
I feel like if you are out there right now and you are looking at a manuscript and you think it won't sell you because of the market, hearing Christine talk must be so important and inspirational for you, because we've talked a lot about... We've talked to people like Jayne Ann Krentz, I loved, as she mentioned, Jayne. We've talked about Jayne... When we talked to Jayne, when we talked to J.R. Ward, we've heard the story of people who change genres because, as J.R. Ward puts it, they were fired or it just wasn't selling, so they pivoted. And we've talked so much about how writers have to be nimble to thrive in the genre. And I think what's fascinating is that Christine is nimble and she is full of ideas and shifting and changing, but she stays really true to her brand and to her point of view. And I think that's a really valuable thing to hold onto right now, especially, as we see romance really grappling with those big questions about what comes next and have we oversaturated and these kind of big issues.

Jennifer Prokop 01:06:40 / #:
We didn't have a chance to ask her. She has re-released some of her romances.

Sarah MacLean 01:06:45 / #:
Oh, we meant to ask.

Jennifer Prokop 01:06:46 / #:
I know, as a sort of-

Sarah MacLean 01:06:48 / #:
And then, we got distracted.

Jennifer Prokop 01:06:49 / #:
Author's cuts. With the rise of self-publishing, I think there's a way in which... There's always a market for something. There's always a small dedicated group of readers who are looking for whatever it is that you are selling. It's traditional publishing that has... It can't quite have that leeway to just be like, "Yes." And so, it's really interesting to hear her talk about that Dorchester imprint taking a chance on her and the difference that made. And it's funny because that is not a... I mean, Dorchester, I feel like is not a name I've even ever heard spoken about before in romance.

Sarah MacLean 01:07:36 / #:
I mean, it's really fascinating because I hadn't thought of Dorchester until-

Jennifer Prokop 01:07:42 / #:
We were prepping.

Sarah MacLean 01:07:42 / #:
I was doing research. We were prepping for this episode. You guys, these are the only episodes we actually prep for. We do actually do research before we talk to these people because we are trying to get them to think we're intelligent and so, we know what we're doing. But no, I mean, Dorchester... And now, of course, I want to go back and look a little more at Dorchester. But I was thinking about our conversation with Radcliffe, when we were talking about how these small presses were really the places where big adventures were happening in romance. And obviously, for Radcliffe and for E.E. Ottoman, that was a different kind of thing, that was happening because queer presses had to publish queer books because traditional publishers weren't doing that. But paranormal, I think about those digital-only presses, again, those kind of Ellora's Cave and Sam Haynes and those places that were taking big risks. And so, it doesn't surprise me that one of the mothers of paranormal came up through a place that doesn't exist anymore.

Jennifer Prokop 01:08:56 / #:
This is something I don't... I don't know that I've ever heard any author explicitly state as clearly, which is when you write from a place... When she told that, I mean, heartbreaking story of her son's death, that somehow there are some readers who can plug into that and see a, I don't know, see themselves in that too. And I think that's one of the things, we talk so much about romance being about the genre of hope, about feelings. Romance is about feelings, but it's our feelings as readers too. And I think that this is something that I was really impressed at how clear-eyed it felt like she was about that relationship. If I'm writing from this place, it's going to find the readers in that place.

Sarah MacLean 01:09:55 / #:
And I also think there is... Talk about a fearlessness in terms of character and theme, because she really does write about trauma. And maybe we'll put in the show notes a link to the discussion that Jen and Adriana Herrera have had about writing trauma and how romance and trauma kind of do go hand in hand a lot. But it's interesting because I think writing trauma is a thing that we are talking about a lot in the industry without talking about it, really having conversations about how you put these things on the page so that characters and writers and readers can see it in a raw way. I think she even used that word, raw. And these books are not for the faint of heart. They are rough reads, and she is writing into that space in a way that I think a lot of us are afraid to do. And I think it's because she clearly has seen it, she's faced it. And I loved every minute of that conversation.

Jennifer Prokop 01:11:19 / #:
Romance gives me so much. But when I kind of interact with someone who has the same root causes, and I've talked about this before. I started reading romance after my parents got divorced. The pain of that was the only thing that made me feel hope and better, was reading romance, that there are people out here who have also gone through painful things and they find a way to love each other. And so, it really is interesting, I think, for me, when you talk to someone who, I don't know, talk about the branches of the romance tree. It feels like we were planted in the same ground.

Sarah MacLean 01:12:01 / #:
Yeah. Yeah. Gosh, that was a very cool conversation. I mean, I should have expected it to be, but...

Jennifer Prokop 01:12:10 / #:
A lot of our trailblazers were really pushing for, "Tell us the story of publishing. Tell us your story through that journey." And that's not what her story was about, and I loved hearing it. It was amazing.

Sarah MacLean 01:12:21 / #:
I'm so inspired every time.

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S05.22: Trailblazer K.J. Charles

Today, we’re welcoming KJ Charles to Fated Mates for our next Trailblazer episode! Known for her work helping to bring queer historical romance to the modern genre, KJ joins us to discuss historical romance, how it remains relevant in the modern world, her work centering queer characters and communities in romance, and the start of her romance career as an editor of Mills & Boon medical romances. We also talk about the arc of her career through early small press publishing, indie publishing, and now, as a traditionally published author.

We hope you enjoy this conversation as much as we did, and we are so grateful to KJ Charles for joining us.

Transcript

Thanks to Kylie Scott, author of End of Story, and Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies, for sponsoring the episode. Visit microdose.com and use the code FATEDMATES for 30% off and free shipping on your first order.

Notes

Books Mentioned

Sponsors

Kylie Scott, author of End of Story
Get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books,
Kobo or at your local indie bookstore
visit Kylie Scott at kyliescott.com

and

Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies
Visit microdose.com and use the code FATEDMATES
for 30% off and free shipping on your order

TRANSCRIPT

KJ Charles 00:00:00 / #:
There's historical romance that just have only the vaguest relationship to the actual history of Britain. There's historical romance that gets really down and dirty, intimate, and where the author has really delved into it. And although I prefer the second kind, but I don't think the first kind should be dismissed, because it is doing something else. I don't think every historical romance needs to go, "But there was only 28 Dukes, and most of them had syphilis and no teeth, and everyone's got lice." I don't want to read books where everyone's got lice. If I want lice, I'll have young children again.

00:00:34 / #:
I would rather read a book where they just sort of throw their hands up and just go, okay, we're Heyer-ing the hell out of this. Because actually, Georgette Heyer, although she did loads of research and everything, when she actually did the bits that are really historically grounded, which is to say An Infamous Army and the other... But they're awful. They're so boring. They're dreadful. Nobody reads them. Nobody wants to read them.

00:00:54 / #:
The sort of glittery, ball-y, wonderful, romance-y ones, we love them. And it is good that people do that. And I think there is space for both. This is actually something I'm struggling with at the moment, because, like a fool, I've been trying to write a duke book. Fundamentally, my problem is, and this really does cut quite deep into the fact that I write historical romance, is that I sort of feel like the entire aristocracy should have been executed.

Sarah MacLean 00:01:22 / #:
That was the voice of KJ Charles, an author who helped establish a place for queer historical romance in the modern genre. Writing, as she describes her work, "Heyer, but gayer." In this trailblazer episode, we talk about KJ's writing, about the way she views the historical romance genre, about building communities of queer people on page, and about her work as a romance editor back in the day for Mills & Boon.

00:01:49 / #:
You are listening to Fated Mates. I'm Sarah MacLean. I read romance novels and I write them.

Jennifer Prokop 00:01:54 / #:
And I'm Jennifer Prokop, a romance reader and editor. Although I might not want to call myself that today because KJ Charles was a real romance editor, and I'm just going to be like, okay, well, I-

Sarah MacLean 00:02:04 / #:
Listen, you just have 19 more years to go.

Jennifer Prokop 00:02:09 / #:
Hire me, Mills & Boon, so I can feel real.

Sarah MacLean 00:02:11 / #:
Oh, my God, imagine. What a good job. What a fun job.

Jennifer Prokop 00:02:16 / #:
Just editing presents all the time.

Sarah MacLean 00:02:18 / #:
The dream.

Jennifer Prokop 00:02:20 / #:
The literal dream. Yes.

Sarah MacLean 00:02:21 / #:
Anyway, but before we get there, we have something else. We have a little housekeeping for everyone. In case you didn't download our quick six-minute episode last week, Fated Mates Live is happening in person in Brooklyn, New York.

Jennifer Prokop 00:02:37 / #:
The best borough of New York City, obviously.

Sarah MacLean 00:02:41 / #:
March 24th at 7:00 PM. We suggest you call up all your romance loving friends and make a weekend of it. The 24th is a Friday. March is a great time to come to New York City because it's maybe a little gray but not super cold, and it'll be very fun. You can go to a museum, you can go to a show, you can come see us. The tickets include a gift certificate to the romance book table sponsored by WORD bookstores in Brooklyn. There will be a bar, there will be lots of other Fated Mates listeners to make friends with. And Jen, and me, and a really delightful spate of special guests, many of whom you all know already.

Jennifer Prokop 00:03:25 / #:
It's been really exciting to see people on Instagram and Twitter talking about getting their friends together and buying tickets, and arranging to come into the city for the weekend.

Sarah MacLean 00:03:35 / #:
Put on a mask, get on an airplane or a train, and come see us. Fatedmates.net/live

Jennifer Prokop 00:03:42 / #:
And now that, that's off the table. Without further ado, here is our conversation with KJ Charles.

Sarah MacLean 00:03:51 / #:
Well, thank you so much for joining us. I'm so excited. I don't think we've ever met.

KJ Charles 00:03:56 / #:
Not in person. I think we've been on panels, but this is a proper face to face, so that's nice.

Sarah MacLean 00:04:02 / #:
It's great. It's nice to meet you. It's nice to see your face.

KJ Charles 00:04:06 / #:
Yes, you too.

Jennifer Prokop 00:04:07 / #:
So everybody, as we've mentioned, I'm really excited about our conversation today because I have also hosted a few panels with KJ, and I love listening to you talk about romance. And I'm really excited because you were also an editor, which is a personal interest to me. Not that it's about me, everybody. So we are really excited to have you today on as a trailblazer. And really, one of our first questions, just because we love hearing about it, is, what was your journey to romance?

KJ Charles 00:04:38 / #:
Well, my mother had a complete set of Georgette Heyer's, which is basically, you know-

Sarah MacLean 00:04:43 / #:
That'll do it.

KJ Charles 00:04:44 / #:
Yeah, I'm an immensely fast reader and a voracious one, and I always have been. One of those kids who just sat in the library all summer, and I read extremely quickly. So I was planning to read all of my parents books. They had to remove all the inappropriate ones from the shelves, kind of thing. And so yes, I'd read through the entirety of Georgette Heyer, and obviously formative. I was thinking about it and, basically, Cotillion and These Old Shades pretty much sum up the two strands of my writing. In Cotillion, you've got Freddy, who is this wonderfully... Yeah, not too bright, wonderful, generous hearts, immensely kind, and also the superpower of really, really good manners to be deployed accurately. And then you've got Avon in These Old Shades, who's basically just a completing amoral son of a so-and-so. So yeah. And those two basically sum up most of my writing. Although, I was also reflecting that Georgette Heyer, or her era, and with the proviso of the kind of person she was and the many prejudices she had. But there's an awful lot of queerness in Georgette Heyer's historical romances.

00:05:56 / #:
In The Reluctant Widow, the actual hero, who isn't the guy who marries the heroine, is very, very heavily queer-coded. In the Corinthian, you've got the heroine who is masquerading as a boy, and the fact that the bad guy effectively hints that he's going to blackmail the hero for having taken off the boy in private, et cetera, et cetera. So there's very strong awareness of non-conventional sexuality. And then The Masquerades is just the most ridiculous cross-dressing, gender-bending. So there's a lot of that in Heyer. So yeah, it's [inaudible 00:06:31 / #], definitely. And then I kind of didn't follow up my intro. I was more of a fantasy reader, to be honest. But when I was, gosh, about 28 or so, I got a job at Mills & Boon. Which to be honest, I took because I was working at an absolute disastrous company for a lunatic, and I needed to get out of there, and Mills & Boon happened to be advertising.

Sarah MacLean 00:06:55 / #:
Take the rope that comes.

KJ Charles 00:06:57 / #:
It was very much take the rope that comes. I wanted a job that would mean not having to go into that snake pit, and they wanted an editor. And I stayed there for years. And everything I learned about editing really came from there.

Sarah MacLean 00:07:11 / #:
When you started at Mills & Boon, aside from Heyer, did you have any frame of reference for what was going on in romance?

KJ Charles 00:07:19 / #:
Not really, no. I hadn't been reading any romance at all. Well, the thing is, because of being an editor, I actually mostly concentrated on reading what I was working on. So when I worked at a travel guide company, I would be reading non-fiction, or fiction, but set in the country for the travel guide I was working on. And then I moved to a house that was doing politics and history, which I read an awful thought of that. So I wasn't actually reading romance at that time. So Mills & Boon came as a complete change of track, but it was just so much more fun. So much more fun.

Sarah MacLean 00:07:58 / #:
What did you begin with at Mills & Boon?

KJ Charles 00:08:00 / #:
They plunge you right into it. Basically, I was on the medical team, the medical romance team.

Sarah MacLean 00:08:06 / #:
And we haven't talked a ton about medical romances on the podcast.

KJ Charles 00:08:10 / #:
Oh see, I love that.

Sarah MacLean 00:08:12 / #:
It's a very English world, the medical romance.

KJ Charles 00:08:15 / #:
A lot of our top authors were Australians.

Jennifer Prokop 00:08:18 / #:
They seem Australian to me more than-

KJ Charles 00:08:19 / #:
Yeah. Well no, it pretty much divided English, Australia. I can't, offhand, think of an American, in fact.

Sarah MacLean 00:08:24 / #:
I did not grow up with medical Romances. And, I mean, I read all of them.

KJ Charles 00:08:29 / #:
They were not the big one, but it was a good team. I like working on it.

Jennifer Prokop 00:08:35 / #:
Listen, Sarah, we grew up with George Clooney on ER though.

Sarah MacLean 00:08:38 / #:
I know.

KJ Charles 00:08:38 / #:
Well, yeah.

Sarah MacLean 00:08:40 / #:
I mean, that's not to say that I don't love a doctor romance, and that's a separate episode.

KJ Charles 00:08:44 / #:
But we had some fabulous... So we had Alison Roberts, who was actually a paramedic, who wrote such exciting story, really exciting. She did one, which is set, there was a big earthquake and then there were full stories set round. It was a wonderful sort of linked series, all starting from the earthquake. Terrific. So good to work on. And she did another trilogy that basically tracked over the progress of one person's pregnancy, for which I had to do the worst Excel spreadsheet in the world. We had to make sure, these three books, every single incident all tracked this one pregnancy. Ah, well, shoot me. But it had Marion Lennox as well, who is a wonderful one. She divided between what we called, we called it tender romance then, which I think is just... What do you call it? harlequin romance?

Jennifer Prokop 00:09:26 / #:
Heartwarming?

KJ Charles 00:09:27 / #:
Yeah, it was just harlequin romance.

Jennifer Prokop 00:09:28 / #:
Just harlequin romance.

KJ Charles 00:09:29 / #:
Yeah. Opposed to harlequin presents. They've probably changed the name about 15 times since then. But Marion Lennox, she was one of my favorite authors to work with. But she wrote the... And this has become kind of quite formative for me because it was a book of hers, I actually looked it up yesterday, it's called Bushfire Bride. And it's one of those, the heroine's got a husband who is in a coma, and has been in a coma for eight years. And there's a sequence where she basically says goodbye to him. And yeah, I'm literally editing this manuscript-

Jennifer Prokop 00:09:58 / #:
I'm crying already.

KJ Charles 00:09:59 / #:
Well, this is back in the day when you edited by hand. You literally had a printout and you made the edits by hand to be input by the copy editor, because that's how old I am.

Sarah MacLean 00:10:09 / #:
Me too.

KJ Charles 00:10:10 / #:
I was literally crying so hard while I was reading this, that the copy editor was like, "You're going to have to redo this page."

Jennifer Prokop 00:10:19 / #:
Your tear stained pages.

KJ Charles 00:10:20 / #:
Literally tear stained. I mean, God, she absolutely [inaudible 00:10:23 / #]. I can't. In fact, I didn't have to look it up too much. I was thinking, what was that book called? And Bushfire Bride came into my head. And that was 20 years ago, easy 20 years ago. Amazing. So yeah, that was it. But it was formative because I delved a lot. We did a lot of books. The turnover there was absolutely crazy. Although I was mainly on medical team, everyone worked across all four. So this historical, harlequin presents, medical, and tender. That's right. So you worked across them and you got given... And if an editor or author got absolutely sick of one another, you might get them switched in.

00:11:06 / #:
Plus, I was very fast. So people tended to give me an extra manuscript when there was a panic on, which there almost always was.

Jennifer Prokop 00:11:12 / #:
Sure.

KJ Charles 00:11:12 / #:
Well, you couldn't have a book come in late, because of the nature of the publishing. And then if everything did fall apart, you had to delve into the slush pile and actually pull out a finished manuscript, and find out a way to make it publishable within the next week.

Sarah MacLean 00:11:26 / #:
Amazing.

KJ Charles 00:11:28 / #:
Well, you learn to edit. I tell you what, you learn to edit like that, it's the most fantastic grounding and structural editing. Because you have to be able to pretty much look at the slush pot manuscript and say, "Okay, it's got totally good bones, the writing's a bit junky, but if the author will agree to basically let me do a really massive edit on it, this will work." Or alternatively, "This isn't working at all, but here is a thing that I can tell the author to do. And if they do it, that will work." But you've got to be able to pretty much x-ray the book, and look at the structure, and identify what will work and what won't.

Sarah MacLean 00:12:02 / #:
Well, especially because in category there's no flab. I mean, you don't have any space to mess up.

Jennifer Prokop 00:12:10 / #:
It's all bones and muscle. Yeah.

KJ Charles 00:12:11 / #:
Yeah. It's really something. There was weeks when I did six manuscripts in a week, kind of thing, which is insane. But like I said, if you were publishing eight presents in a month, you can't publish seven presents. It doesn't work like that.

Sarah MacLean 00:12:27 / #:
Right.

KJ Charles 00:12:28 / #:
You have to deliver eight presents.

Sarah MacLean 00:12:30 / #:
People have signed up for their box. Right.

KJ Charles 00:12:32 / #:
Well, yeah, exactly. It's completely nonnegotiable. So I honestly think I couldn't have had a better training in fiction editorial. Because it was so fast and so relentless, and you had to be really super practical.

Sarah MacLean 00:12:47 / #:
So at what point during that process did you think, "I'm going to start doing this myself?" Is that how it went?

KJ Charles 00:12:57 / #:
So when I was there... Well, see, I didn't really. I've always had it vaguely in mind that it would be nice to write, or indeed to have written a book. When I was there, they very kindly let me go off for four months and work from home in Japan. And this is, as I said, 20 odd years ago. So that was a really pretty advanced thing for them to do. My husband, my then boyfriend, was doing stuff in Japan, and we lived there for four months. So I did use some of my free time to start writing then, but it wasn't a romance. I wrote a fantasy novel, which has never been published, nor should it be. And then I wrote a thriller, which was picked up by Samhian, and sold about 12 copies, properly, deservedly. But it didn't occur to me to write a romance at all. I mean, it just never... Partly, I think, actually trying to write romance while you are working at Mills & Boon might actually be a really, you really bad idea.

00:13:54 / #:
Your head might explode. Yeah, I couldn't recommend that, I don't think. So it was quite a long time, actually, after I had left. And then I got married about a year later. And then about a year after that I had a baby. And I started writing when the baby was quite small, because you're trying to stay sane. It was supposed to be a fantasy novel. But at that point, with all the years I'd worked with Mills & Boon, basically, romance had coded... My neural pathways are like valleys. My neural pathways are carved so deeply into my brain. But it just turned into a romance. And that was The Magpie Lord, which was my first published book, my first romance. And once I just leaned into it, it just felt like the most natural thing in the world to do it. So there we are.

Jennifer Prokop 00:14:51 / #:
It sounds like you mostly edited contemporary romance. So what was the draw for you to historical romance or queer romance? Did one of those come first in your brain in terms of the kind of story you wanted to write?

KJ Charles 00:15:04 / #:
I'm always more interested in historical. The thriller that I wrote was an attempt at contemporary, and I hated everything about it. Because I'd live under a rock, I don't like modern technology, and it dates so badly, so quickly. And mobile phones ruin everything, because you set up this whole drama, and all [inaudible 00:15:26 / #] just phone up and go, "Oh yeah, this is what's going on." And you've ruined everything. And then you've got to find a reason for them not to have a mobile. So yeah, historical, obviously where it's at. And also, I like the differences. I like doing the research, and I like writing about different times and different people in different places. The similarities and differences are just much more interesting to me. So although I didn't read many, I didn't edit, rather, many historicals at Mills & Boon, because we only did four a month, and they had a historicals team. So I had one or two authors. But no, it's always been what I wanted to write. And the other thing is I'm very pulp focused. A lot of what I write is sort of riffing off the pulp of the Victorian, and Edwardian, and sort of 1920s period, because I just really enjoy that. And I enjoy picking that up, and running with this, and messing about with it. And often, queering it, because as anyone who plays with Victorian to 20th century pulp will tell you, it's just absolutely ripe for that. There's a fun, it's fun. Yeah.

Jennifer Prokop 00:16:37 / #:
Gosh, it's so fun. I feel like that's the thing I really love about your books. There was one, and I'm terrible with titles, where he was a taxidermist. Is that right?

KJ Charles 00:16:50 / #:
Yes. An Unseen Attraction.

Jennifer Prokop 00:16:52 / #:
Yes. And I was seriously like, "Why am I really interested in this right now? Why is this such a great time?"

KJ Charles 00:16:58 / #:
I loved doing that though. It wasn't actually what it was meant to be. I pitched the publisher something completely different, but then I couldn't write the thing I pitched to the publisher, it turned out to be a terrible idea. And I can't even remember now why taxidermist struck me as a good idea. It's one of the most fun books I've ever read. I did this deep dive into Victorian taxidermy. I've got the most extraordinary books on my bookshelf. But I had a whole sequence where he actually taxidermy's a canary just because it was so fascinating to me. I was about inches, literally inches, from going and finding someone who would teach me to do it myself.

Sarah MacLean 00:17:33 / #:
Well, that's the best part, that you can convince yourself. I always feel like writing historical also gives you... It's really best for procrastinators, because then we can sort of go off and convince ourselves that learning how to taxiderm is actually work.

KJ Charles 00:17:47 / #:
It's totally what you should be doing.

Jennifer Prokop 00:17:49 / #:
You had to learn to pick a lock to write that book, Sarah.

Sarah MacLean 00:17:51 / #:
I learned to pick a lock to write a lock pick.

KJ Charles 00:17:53 / #:
That's so cool.

Sarah MacLean 00:17:53 / #:
I mean, it did become very useful when I had to open my mother's cheap safe.

KJ Charles 00:17:58 / #:
Okay, that's fantastic.

Sarah MacLean 00:17:59 / #:
And I'd never felt more powerful.

00:18:05 / #:
This week's episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by Kylie Scott, author of End of Story, a new book out this week.

Jennifer Prokop 00:18:12 / #:
We love Kylie Scott here at Fated Mates, and this one sounds like a banger.

Sarah MacLean 00:18:17 / #:
Ugh. She's so great.

Jennifer Prokop 00:18:19 / #:
So here's the story. Susie Bowen inherits a charming fixer up from her aunt. And so she is really excited. She's going to do the whole HGTV scene and revamp the whole thing.

Sarah MacLean 00:18:30 / #:
Perfect.

Jennifer Prokop 00:18:31 / #:
The book starts with a knock on her door. Her contractor has arrived and-

Sarah MacLean 00:18:35 / #:
Is he hot?

Jennifer Prokop 00:18:37 / #:
He's hot. His name's Lars. That's real hot. Unfortunately, Lars is her ex's best friend. And her ex is a real dirt bag. And Lars saw their whole humiliating, public breakup. And Susie just is like, oh God.

Sarah MacLean 00:18:53 / #:
No. What am I going to do?

Jennifer Prokop 00:18:55 / #:
This is awful.

Sarah MacLean 00:18:55 / #:
But she needs a contractor.

Jennifer Prokop 00:18:57 / #:
She does. And Lars is available, thank goodness. So I think she's just going to have to lean into it.

Sarah MacLean 00:19:02 / #:
Even if it's pity contracting.

Jennifer Prokop 00:19:04 / #:
It's fine, whatever. Here's the part that's great. He is tearing down some wall, and they find a divorce certificate hidden in the wall that is dated 10 years in the future and has both of their names.

Sarah MacLean 00:19:19 / #:
What?

Jennifer Prokop 00:19:20 / #:
Right. What's going to happen?

Sarah MacLean 00:19:21 / #:
Wait, why? What?

Jennifer Prokop 00:19:23 / #:
You, and Lars, and Susie are going to have to discover it all together by downloading and reading this book.

Sarah MacLean 00:19:29 / #:
I mean, as though I wasn't going to download and read this book anyway.

Jennifer Prokop 00:19:32 / #:
Of course.

Sarah MacLean 00:19:33 / #:
No matter what it was about. Because Kylie's amazing. But this is such a cool idea. I'm going to read it immediately.

Jennifer Prokop 00:19:39 / #:
Exactly. Have a great time, everybody. You can find End of Story anywhere eBooks are sold, in audio or in print.

Sarah MacLean 00:19:46 / #:
Thanks to Kylie for sponsoring the episode.

00:19:51 / #:
One of the things that Jen and I have been talking about a lot recently, there's a woman who is on TikTok and also Twitter, and her handle is baskinsuns. And she's been talking a lot about how, in her mind, historical is really more like speculative fiction than it is...

Jennifer Prokop 00:20:11 / #:
Historical fiction.

Sarah MacLean 00:20:12 / #:
Historical fiction. Historical romance is more like speculative fiction than historical romance is like historical fiction. And I think this is a really fascinating way of thinking about the genre. And I wonder how that strikes you.

KJ Charles 00:20:25 / #:
I think there's very definitely strands of it. I mean, you've got the Bridgerton, the TV series, for example.

Sarah MacLean 00:20:33 / #:
Right.

KJ Charles 00:20:35 / #:
But I mean, why not? Well, okay, actually, we could debate this one for hours, and people already have. So I'm not going to go into that. But on the face of it, you could look at that and literally just go, okay, this is a fantasy version where a large number of the aristocracy are people with color, and why should you not do that? Why is that not a good thing to do? Then there's historical romance that just does have only the vaguest relationship to the actual history of Britain. And there's historical romance that gets really down and dirty, intimate, and where the author has really delved into it.

00:21:16 / #:
And although I prefer the second kind, but I don't think the first kind should be dismissed, because it is doing something else. But maybe looking at the historical fantasy without magic would almost resolve that argument. If you see what I mean. Because it is trying to do something else. I don't think every historical romance needs to go, "But there was only 28 Dukes, and most of them had syphilis and no teeth, and everyone's got lice." I don't want to read books where everyone's got lice. If I want lice, I'll have young children again.

Jennifer Prokop 00:21:49 / #:
Yeah, I don't want to read any books where there's any lice, actually.

KJ Charles 00:21:52 / #:
Exactly. I would rather read a book where they just sort of throw their hands up and just go, okay, we're Heyer-ing the hell out of this. Because actually, Georgette Heyer, although she did loads of research and everything, when she actually did the bits that are really historically grounded, which is to say An Infamous Army and the other... They're awful. They're so boring. They're dreadful. Nobody reads them. Nobody wants to read them.

Sarah MacLean 00:22:13 / #:
No. It's much more fun to read her making things up.

KJ Charles 00:22:15 / #:
Yeah. Well, the sort of glittery, ball-y, wonderful, romanc-y ones, we love them. And it is good that people do that. I suspect that's kind of what that person might have been getting at, or at least, that's how I feel about it. And I think there is space for both, very definitely. But this is actually something I'm struggling with at the moment, because, like fool, I've been trying to write a duke book. And my problem with the duke book... I mean, fundamentally, my problem is, and this really does cut quite deep into the fact that I write historical romance, is that I sort of feel like the entire aristocracy should have been executed. Usually, I sort of hand wave this one. And then I started writing a duke, and I've got 60,000 words, and I'm just sitting there going, "You haven't got any problems that cannot be solved by your money, which you have."

Sarah MacLean 00:23:11 / #:
Exactly.

KJ Charles 00:23:11 / #:
I hate it.

Sarah MacLean 00:23:12 / #:
Money, power, title. Exactly.

KJ Charles 00:23:14 / #:
Yeah. I mean, seriously, you don't have any problems. So I have not in fact squared that circle yet. And if I've wasted 60,000 words, I'm going to be banging my head against a wall. But currently, I feel like I've wasted 60,000 words, because I cannot, for the life of me...

Sarah MacLean 00:23:29 / #:
It's poor little rich boy, right?

KJ Charles 00:23:31 / #:
It is. And that's not...

Sarah MacLean 00:23:32 / #:
[inaudible 00:23:32 / #].

KJ Charles 00:23:32 / #:
It's something I struggle with. No.

Jennifer Prokop 00:23:35 / #:
And that's not your brand.

Sarah MacLean 00:23:36 / #:
He didn't like his dad, KJ.

KJ Charles 00:23:40 / #:
Yeah. And the things that could be a problem... Oh, anyway, I won't bore you with my struggles, because I'm boring myself with my struggles. But it's a real problem for me.

Sarah MacLean 00:23:48 / #:
It's interesting that you bring this up, because I actually think this is a push-pull that's happening. This did not happen in historical romance 20 years ago. Nobody worried about this.

Jennifer Prokop 00:23:58 / #:
Even 10 years ago.

Sarah MacLean 00:23:59 / #:
Or even 10 years ago. But now, those of us... I mean, I've written a thousand dukes. And you can see it in my writing, that I've gone from poor little rich boy to now it's time to burn down the dukedom entirely. Right? Let's set it on fire.

KJ Charles 00:24:14 / #:
It's really hard not to, isn't it?

Sarah MacLean 00:24:16 / #:
Yeah, I don't do it anymore.

KJ Charles 00:24:18 / #:
Exactly. And because apart from [inaudible 00:24:21 / #], I don't know about you, but how often do you just sit there and think, "So where does this guy's money come from?"

Sarah MacLean 00:24:25 / #:
Oh, well, yeah. And what's interesting is in the eighties or nineties, you could wave it away. He has plantations, but he pays his workers.

KJ Charles 00:24:34 / #:
Or you don't even mention the plantation, he's just rich.

Sarah MacLean 00:24:37 / #:
Right.

KJ Charles 00:24:37 / #:
Okay. It's fine. He's rich, he's got land. We don't talk about the English people working for him, still less, anyone outside... Make it Victorian, and how much of his money is coming from empire, which is say colonialism, say theft.

Sarah MacLean 00:24:51 / #:
Yeah. And there are only so many times that you can sort of accept, well, this one got his title when he was 35 because he did something good.

KJ Charles 00:25:04 / #:
And if they do that, and steal money, where does that come from?

Sarah MacLean 00:25:07 / #:
It's probably in a war. There's a lot. It's hard.

KJ Charles 00:25:11 / #:
There is a lot. Yeah. No, there is a lot.

Sarah MacLean 00:25:14 / #:
Which is why there's something to this. Like you said, historical fantasy, but no magic. Because it does feel like, in a lot of ways, the work that these books are doing, the social work that these books are doing is not about... Obviously, it's very difficult to handle where did the power come from, where did the money come from. But in many cases, in your books especially, the work of your books is very important, currently. For the world that we live in now, for 2023. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that, about how you think about the job, the work of the books in a world where, right now, queer people and books about queer people are under attack across the United States and around...

00:26:03 / #:
... and books about queer people are under attack across the United States and around the world. So how do you reconcile the work with the world, I guess, is the question?

KJ Charles 00:26:10 / #:
Oh, Lordy.

Sarah MacLean 00:26:13 / #:
I'm asking for a friend who is me.

KJ Charles 00:26:18 / #:
Do you mean in the sense of the guiding principles, as it were?

Sarah MacLean 00:26:24 / #:
Yeah.

KJ Charles 00:26:24 / #:
I mean I feel like fundamentally the purpose of romance, I mean it's twofold, isn't it? You want to give hope and you want to give connection. So the hope is ... romance gives us a portrayal of a better world where people are loyal and people are loving and someone stands up for you and you've got family. And it's not just hope. It's fulfilled hope because you pick up a book thinking, "I hope this ends well," and it does because it's a romance novel. And then I think you've got connection in the sense of you're writing a book that depicts people connecting in a real way, but also there's a romance community and there's a fact that people see a romance novel with someone who looks like them and behaves like a queer person and black person or whoever on the cover, and that romance novel is being sold and it's on the shelves of the bookshop, that's really, really important. And it's all the more important if they're taking the books out of the schools and the libraries, which I have to say is [inaudible 00:27:34 / #] terrifying. I don't know what your policy on swearing is, but-

Jennifer Prokop 00:27:40 / #:
No, please go for it. We're-

KJ Charles 00:27:43 / #:
I mean when it comes down to it, I want my books to be ones that people ... that they're a place of safety where things work out, even if things don't look like they're going to work out. Which I think is important because there is absolutely a place of very, very low angst romance where everything is totally okay. And I don't write that. I'm really glad it exists because people sometimes need to go there. But I think people also sometimes need to have the drama or the angst or whatever but still with the guarantee of everything being okay. We use fiction to tell ourselves that the world could be a better place fundamentally. That is what fiction is for. It's to try things out and explore them and say, "Look, here's this thing, this is the way the world could be." And I write the books how the world should have been and how I would like it to be.

Sarah MacLean 00:28:47 / #:
I keep thinking about what we were talking about about the Dukes situation and I think part of the reason class is so hard to deal with in romance is we all know that many people have found happiness even in the throes of financial instability like of course, right?

00:29:08 / #:
But at the same time, we all also know that financial instability does make so many problems go away. And I think romance really hasn't quite figured out how to grapple with some of that. I know that's, I'm sorry, I'm bringing that back but I was thinking as you were talking too about how the world should be. And I think so much of what romance is trying to do when it's found family and this is the way the world should be, is we shouldn't have people that are like, "Well, I can't really have the life I want to live right now because I have to work 800 hours a week," or whatever. Or, "I can't have the life I want to live because I live in Florida and these books are being banned and what's that like for my family or my children?" And I think so much of what romance is about is saying we don't have to live like that.

KJ Charles 00:30:01 / #:
Yeah. And I think addressing problems through a fictional lens is a great way of helping people deal with them. I mean I remember one absolutely lovely bit of mail I got that was from a reader who was going through something like quite rubbish, I think it might have even been chemo, but she basically said that ... And this is going to sound, actually, it's going to ring a bell because you all could have done it, but she basically was reading this book of mine where the hero is kidnapped and he's basically trapped in this room and he's just doggedly doing sit-ups with a chain on his leg because he's not going to sit there and do nothing. So he does a thousand sit-ups and she pretty much said, "I was just going through it thinking, well, I'm like Darling, I'm like Will darling doing his sit-ups and if he can do a thousand sit-ups, then I can do this thing kind of thing. And actually that's-

Sarah MacLean 00:30:53 / #:
Nice. It is.

KJ Charles 00:30:56 / #:
So it's not just about romance providing an escape. Well, it does provide an escape. I think we can all use this, we can all think of characters and almost model ourselves.

Sarah MacLean 00:31:06 / #:
Yes.

KJ Charles 00:31:07 / #:
This is why sex positivity is important or depicting sexual relationships at work, I'm not going to necessarily say healthy because another thing romance does which is a big matter of discussion. But you can show people starting from quite an unhealthy place, but you can actually show them starting from an unhealthy place and improving. You can model all sorts of behavior and people can try them out and apply those ideas to their own situation while they're also reading a highly entertaining book that doesn't feel didactic.

Jennifer Prokop 00:31:39 / #:
Well, and I think for me it's always been love is worth it. Even when you've been hurt. We've all been hurt. I know it's very old school, but those old '90s romance heroes who were like, "I've been hurt once, I can never love again," that means something to me because we all have, right? I don't think there's anything more brave than putting your heart on the line again. And I think romance every single time is really saying you might not be called to some big act of bravery in your life, regular people of the world, but you will be called upon to make these small commitments to the people in your lives in my community or the people ... I mean I don't know. I know that's really cheesy maybe, but that really means something to me.

KJ Charles 00:32:25 / #:
But I mean it does. This is the thing. I get quite a few letters and people discover the most ... If they really see themselves in a character, if they see a dyspraxic character and they've not read one before and it means something to them to be seen, or people who read an absolute shedload of queer romance and then they go, "Actually, it turns out I might not be a success after all," which happens. Yeah, it happens. And some people who've never been aware that there was an option discover that. I think that is the power of romance. It's the power of showing how things could be and they work out, they guarantee work out. They don't do the little life on you.

Sarah MacLean 00:33:18 / #:
And I think that, to that point, we've really been very lucky as romance readers and people in the community for the last however long decade because it feels like there was so much less of that representation before. And obviously we've tried really hard for these particular episodes to bring people in who have been working on representation of all forms from the beginnings of the modern genre. But I think about it was so rare to see characters who were anything other than cis white, thin, rich-

Jennifer Prokop 00:34:05 / #:
Rich people.

Sarah MacLean 00:34:05 / #:
... et cetera, before. But now it feels like part of the reason why we asked you to join us is because it does feel like when you came onto the scene there was a shift, not that you brought the shift-

KJ Charles 00:34:21 / #:
No, it's [inaudible 00:34:23 / #] but yeah.

Sarah MacLean 00:34:22 / #:
... but you were a part of something that was happening. It was firing on all cylinders, right?

KJ Charles 00:34:28 / #:
Zeitgeist.

Sarah MacLean 00:34:31 / #:
Yeah. So I wonder if you could talk, was there an awareness of that for you as somebody who had come up through ... I mean one of the most classic romance avenues was the sort of Harlequin Mills & Boon pathway, right? So what you were working on when you were there was almost like the purest of romance.

KJ Charles 00:34:53 / #:
Very much the old school.

Sarah MacLean 00:34:54 / #:
Yeah. So did you have an awareness at the time that you started writing or you started being published that something was shifting?

KJ Charles 00:35:05 / #:
It's actually quite interesting because I sold The Magpie Lord to Samhain.

Sarah MacLean 00:35:10 / #:
And Samhain was doing so much of that too.

KJ Charles 00:35:14 / #:
They were doing a shedload, but even they basically went, "Look, this is Victorian queer fantasy and Victorian queer fantasy romance. And they pretty much said expected to sell 12 copies because it's not even regency. People don't like historical that much. It's got fantasy which can put a bunch of people off. They were doing quite a lot of queer romance, but you were really very much looking at contemporaries mostly with two [inaudible 00:35:42 / #] on the cover kind of thing.

00:35:45 / #:
And I did actually go out looking. The only other one I could find was Widdershins by Jordan L. Hawk who was also 19th century queer so same area, fantasy, and I go, "That's exactly the right ... Well, how dare you say there isn't one of them? Of course there is." There's one of them. Well, that's always the way, isn't it? There can be only one but Jordan's self published, so my expectations were extraordinarily low basically. They didn't expect it to sell a lot, but they still wanted to do it. And although it didn't end well, I really respect what they were doing. And then it did sell well. I mean it sold extremely well.

Sarah MacLean 00:36:29 / #:
Yeah. Do you know why? I mean obviously it's fantastic and that's why, but was there something that happened? Was there somebody who-

KJ Charles 00:36:36 / #:
There was a good reader who I've always ... I don't know if I'm right, but I've always attributed it to this one personal good ... You know how some people, good readers, some of them just seem to have 40 zillion connections? Well, one of them got an ARC and just left this absolutely phenomenal review and then it just went boom.

Sarah MacLean 00:36:54 / #:
Because it also feels like fantasy. You scooped up a world of readers who were not being served by romance at all.

KJ Charles 00:37:03 / #:
Yeah. People love ... I mean, yeah, look at how much historical fantasy and even queer historical fantasy there is now. It's just this wonderful, wonderful cornucopia because I think everyone's always loved this. I don't know why people ... One of the most depressing things for me about working with publishers, and I've really experienced this as an editor, is they just sit there going, "That won't sell. Oh no, that won't sell." "Well, how do you know it won't sell? We haven't published one." Well, somebody else did one and it didn't sell."

Jennifer Prokop 00:37:35 / #:
We've tried nothing, KJ.

KJ Charles 00:37:36 / #:
We've tried nothing and we're out of ideas and it's actually along the lines of I've heard people say variants on, "If it sold, we'd have already published something like it."

Jennifer Prokop 00:37:47 / #:
Sure. Nobody has new ideas.

KJ Charles 00:37:50 / #:
Yeah, no. We'd already know if this kind of thing would sell. There isn't loads of this on the market already, therefore it doesn't sell. And you go, "Well, why don't we start it?" It is genuinely infuriating.

00:38:03 / #:
And then you get through that and then you go through there can be only one phase, which we have lived through in which they will absolutely publish a Black author but one Black author. Or we can have one Indian, or we can have one queer person on our books but, goodness me, not more. Because one is plenty and then, oh my God, if it doesn't sell, [inaudible 00:38:26 / #].

Sarah MacLean 00:38:28 / #:
Beverly Jenkins, Forever.

KJ Charles 00:38:31 / #:
Well, I mean Beverly Jenkins is like this amazing ... I really hope someone's done a PhD because she sold so much. And then you look back and you think, "Why weren't they scooping up other Black historical romance authors when she was selling and selling and selling?" And why wouldn't they be going, "This is a trend, this is a trend that we can cash in on?" And they don't. They highlander it, they say, "There can be only one Beverly Jenkins."

00:39:02 / #:
And then, of course, it tips and then suddenly they go, "Oh my God, gold rush." But then they're scooping up everyone they possibly can because finally they have worked out they can make some money on it. Which obviously, as we know, is a publisher's sole reason for being, and it's maddening to observe. So my experience with especially queer fantasy historical romance was pretty much that all my [inaudible 00:39:32 / #] out there is there's a whole bunch of people writing it and a whole bunch of publishers just going, "No, that's not going to sell. That's not going to sell." Samhein told me it wasn't going to sell even while they published it so it was presumably an act of charity or something. And then, oh my God, now they'll [inaudible 00:39:46 / #] all the manuscripts that I will absolutely bet you people have been sending in for years and years.

Jennifer Prokop 00:39:51 / #:
Sure.

Sarah MacLean 00:39:51 / #:
Right. And what's fascinating about that is Samhain is one of those publishers. So let's talk about that piece of romance history because it was so fleeting, it feels like, and it was so important at the same time because there was this moment, this crest of a moment where eBooks had just hit, people had just started accepting eReaders into their lives. There were so many of these small presses that were taking on authors who larger publishers were saying, "Nobody buys that. There's no market for it." Samhain was one. Elora's Cave was doing it in erotica. There were a number of other queer presses. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit ... We've never had anybody on who published with Samhain, so I wonder if you could talk a little about that world, who it was there, what was going on in the Samhain world and then that didn't last for very long.

KJ Charles 00:40:58 / #:
It didn't last for very long. It was very, very unstable. If you look at it, they've all imploded, haven't they?

Sarah MacLean 00:41:03 / #:
All of them.

KJ Charles 00:41:05 / #:
[inaudible 00:41:06 / #], that's gone.

Sarah MacLean 00:41:06 / #:
Except for Radclyffe's. But it's different because Bold Strokes is like Radclyffe running the show, right?

KJ Charles 00:41:12 / #:
No, well, Bold Strokes, I think there's a couple of ones where it's basically people who publish themselves and possibly their friends and it's very, very specific. But also lesbian romance kind of is differently siloed. But for the sort of more general thing that was going on that I was part of, so you had [inaudible 00:41:33 / #] that was I mean they were doing some really weird things with covers that were very difficult and I think it ended poorly. And then Samhain who they did a lot of exciting stuff and they really put a lot of heart into it ended poorly. And then you've got Dreamspinner who are still going but-

Sarah MacLean 00:41:54 / #:
But don't pay their authors.

KJ Charles 00:41:56 / #:
But don't pay their authors and I have very strong views on that.

Sarah MacLean 00:41:59 / #:
My constant asterisk about Dreamspinner. They don't pay their authors, don't publish with them.

KJ Charles 00:42:04 / #:
But do not publish with them because they still owe large amounts of back royalties they should never have touched. And then you have Riptide who imploded in such a spectacular way that there was a whole page article about it in The Guardian, which is a UK newspaper, about a small American press going under because of the spectacular nature of their inflation.

Sarah MacLean 00:42:23 / #:
Well, it was so horrifying that.

KJ Charles 00:42:26 / #:
Well, it was horrifying and I was one of the people who ... I had a book coming out with them literally at that time and it was one of those ones where it was so close to publishing and I didn't want to publish with them, but it was like a couple of days before and there was an audio book. So I basically wrote to them and said, "I'm very dubious about this." And they literally reversed my rights without asking because I think they were just automatically [inaudible 00:42:51 / #].

Jennifer Prokop 00:42:51 / #:
They were just doing it. Yeah, they were just doing it.

Sarah MacLean 00:42:53 / #:
For everybody listening, we'll put a link in show notes to the Riptide story, but essentially sort of very broad strokes, there were allegations and screenshots of an editor sexually harassing authors.

KJ Charles 00:43:08 / #:
Yeah, and there was a bunch more to it. There was another scandal. Anyway, the whole ... Without delving any further into that because, to be honest-

Jennifer Prokop 00:43:17 / #:
We'll never get back out.

KJ Charles 00:43:17 / #:
No and-

Sarah MacLean 00:43:18 / #:
And it's not what today is about.

KJ Charles 00:43:20 / #:
But pulling my hair out. But that was actually quite a large part of it. It was a very [inaudible 00:43:27 / #] time. There was a great deal of hope and a great deal of people who were in some ways throwing everything at the wall to see what would stick because nobody knew, because nobody had been doing it before.

Sarah MacLean 00:43:38 / #:
Right. It literally hadn't existed.

KJ Charles 00:43:41 / #:
Yeah, suddenly, yeah, queer presses had been these very tiny outfits probably operating out of New York and doing a paperback for like $20 or something because of the cost. And suddenly you can back it out there and get it on ebook. And the numbers were pretty startling because so many people who were around the whole world who had been unable to get these books were able to get these books.

00:44:05 / #:
But of course what happened, and which happened with much of romance, is the realization that you could then self publish on Amazon and get 70% instead of 25%. And people started questioning what a lot of those presses ... [inaudible 00:44:21 / #] and they put an absolutely shocking generic cover on it and didn't give you any editorial support or you get your mates to knock up a cover and put it on Amazon and it wasn't really a debate. So I think that very heavily lies behind why so many of them didn't survive.

Jennifer Prokop 00:44:39 / #:
I just was doing a library thing and I was talking about a lot of people who self-publish will trade services with each other as a way to get books to market. As you said, I have a friend who can do a cover and I can do a copy edit. I mean it feels like people are recreating the work of the publisher in smaller groups in order to put out good products.

KJ Charles 00:45:03 / #:
That does exist. I definitely know of people who do it and there's lots of sort of horse trading with newsletters and mutual supports and so on and so forth, which I think, yeah, can be great. I'm always a bit dubious about putting the words community and authors in the same sentence because like cats in a sack and also ... but there are clearly people who do work together to help one another and recommend and lots of people who will just email me or DM me and sort of say, "Can you help with this? Can you tell me somebody who might ... Who did you use for?" And I think that is important. Well, for any marginalized community, but especially when you're trying to build it.

Sarah MacLean 00:45:53 / #:
This week's episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies. So you've all heard us talking about microdosing and the concept of microdosing, which is commonly associated with psychedelics, wellness, performance enhancement and creativity. And we've been talking about Microdose Gummies for a while on the podcast and we've talked a lot about how we use them ourselves. Jen uses them for sleep. I have used them in the last few months as sort of a way to just take the edge off and calm down off of a rough time or a stressful time over the holidays. People use them for creative boosts. We've heard about people who listen using them for pain and anxiety. It's a great product that's going to fit into your lifestyle. So I really love ... I was like the whole idea of just chilling out in this really stressful time of year has been one way lately than I have found them helping me.

00:46:55 / #:
So if you search around the internet, have a Google search on microdosing, you'll learn more and you'll learn about all the ways that people are using them out there in the world. Our show today is sponsored by Microdose Gummies, which deliver the perfect entry level doses of THC that help you feel just the right amount of good. And you can find Microdose available nationwide. It'll be shipped directly to your doors at microdose.com. You can use the code Fated Mates for 30% off your first order and free shipping. Thanks as always to Lumi Labs and Microdose for sponsoring the episode. Did you have a community coming up, cats in your sack?

KJ Charles 00:47:39 / #:
I'm not a very good community person. I tend to be fairly ... There's a reason I work on my own in the shade, but I've had-

Sarah MacLean 00:47:49 / #:
Or editors or anybody who you felt was helping you to shape the road?

KJ Charles 00:47:55 / #:
Yeah, no, definitely. I mean resources like I talked a lot with Alexis Hall, obviously, queer romance British. That's been really, really interesting. Jordan Hawk, who I co-wrote a book with and E.E. Ottoman as well. And that's actually been really important I think. Probably I talk to Brits because it is actually a bit separate. Romance is so American dominated that it's actually nice so Talia Hibbert, for example, was great and Alexis and I've also got May Peterson who is an author of mostly trans, also non-binary romance including fantasy romance, but who's also a really good editor and a book doctor and she's like book doctored three books for me and saved them effectively. So having someone like that at your back is absolutely invaluable. Yeah, I think establishing relationships just with people who will actually give your book a read and tell you to calm down and take a deep breath if you're being given hassle is very important to anyone.

Jennifer Prokop 00:49:10 / #:
Do you think the perception of romance has changed over your career? I mean coming up from Mills & Boone to where we are now, how has it changed and do you have a crystal ball like where are we going?

KJ Charles 00:49:25 / #:
It's probably how do people seek romance and all that, it's such a massive genre that it's really hard. I see people say things about romance and I'm thinking but you're looking at Kindle Unlimited that's full of [inaudible 00:49:40 / #] books and toxic, I don't know what my God the hell people are doing in there. And then you're looking at the kind of books which are, lots of the kind of books which are getting on the shelves at the moment, which there's much more diversity and there's a much stronger sense of sex positivity and body positivity and all these great things. And then you've also got this huge strand of there's always a Fifty Shades or a Colleen Hoover, isn't there?

00:50:09 / #:
And how can we say what do people think of romance when you're simultaneously talking about Talia Hibbert and Colleen Hoover and whatever godforsaken thing is at the top of the Kindle Unlimited charts? I have different perceptions of those things.

00:50:27 / #:
That said, so the thing that actually is really striking me at the moment, so you're getting a lot more romance of the kind that I like and read is hitting the bookshelves, Boyfriend Material and Red, White and Blue and [inaudible 00:50:42 / #]. People like Jackie Lau who's set out to write romance with Chinese leads because she couldn't get them published and she just sort of doggedly said, "I'm going to self-publish these because no publisher will take them." And now she's being traditionally published because she just dug in and did it. So you're getting all those on the shelves, and I don't know if it's the same in the US, but I went into the Waterstones, the only big book chain we've got left and there's a table covered in romance novels and the label on it says new adults. It doesn't say romance anywhere. The word romance doesn't come up.

Jennifer Prokop 00:51:17 / #:
No, they don't like that word. No.

KJ Charles 00:51:22 / #:
Yeah, well [inaudible 00:51:24 / #], those are not new adult books. That's complete rubbish. But they don't ... and this is why the cartoon covers bothers me, not because I don't like them excessively but because it seems to me part of the big branding effort to go, "This isn't romance." It looks like chick lit or it looks like lit fic. I mean there's a book that's come out recently whose name I probably shouldn't say but it's okay because I can't remember it, but the blurb is one of those that looks like it belongs on Kindle Unlimited. It's one of those ones of he looks at me with his dark eyes and I see myself falling into the prison of his yada yada yada like black verse. There's black verse-

Sarah MacLean 00:52:00 / #:
And there's no name and it's so frustrating when you're trying-

Jennifer Prokop 00:52:03 / #:
And there's no names, and it's so frustrating when you're trying to get information.

KJ Charles 00:52:06 / #:
There's no names and it's just all this sort of vague, "she is my doom, she is my destiny" et cetera. So, the blurb is all that. But the cover really is this absolutely beautiful thing, where it looks like it belongs on a book about a Hungarian countess in the 1940s whose family is slowly decaying during the war.

Sarah MacLean 00:52:28 / #:
She's trying to keep that castle together. It's hard work.

KJ Charles 00:52:30 / #:
But it's the most lit-bit cover you've ever seen. And the blurb is the most horrible KU thing you've ever seen. And the book, I have no idea what the book is. I completely [inaudible 00:52:41 / #]

Jennifer Prokop 00:52:40 / #:
What is in there?

KJ Charles 00:52:43 / #:
Actually clashing... I don't know.

Jennifer Prokop 00:52:47 / #:
Maybe that's the strategy.

KJ Charles 00:52:49 / #:
Well, if the strategy is to confuse anyone who knows anything about romance, then they have absolutely nailed it.

Sarah MacLean 00:52:56 / #:
I saw a book the other day that is absolutely not romance, just contemporary fiction and it had a very generically vector art cover. And I just thought, this is not a romance-only problem now. This is a publishing problem.

KJ Charles 00:53:11 / #:
It is a massive publishing problem.

Sarah MacLean 00:53:12 / #:
It's just all one big bin to them, I guess. It's a book.

KJ Charles 00:53:16 / #:
The last two romantic comedies I have bought, both of which had cartoon covers or drawn covers-

Sarah MacLean 00:53:22 / #:
Were they funny?

KJ Charles 00:53:23 / #:
Both of which said rom-com on the blurb, neither of them has been romance. And actually, neither of them was a comedy. One of them was all about the heroine was being stalked by her toxic, abusive ex. It's not comedy. Why is that funny?

Sarah MacLean 00:53:36 / #:
No.

KJ Charles 00:53:36 / #:
What's going on here? And there's no romance. The other one, it's a very good book, but it's literally a book about this woman having this really difficult relationship with her family, and her faith, or whatever, and she gets engaged to this other guy. Then at the end, she thinks she might start dating the other guy who's really nice. "I think I might start dating him in a couple of months" is not a happy ending. You can't call that a romantic comedy, but they are.

Sarah MacLean 00:54:02 / #:
Right.

Jennifer Prokop 00:54:03 / #:
Yeah.

KJ Charles 00:54:03 / #:
So, where do I think romance is going? If the publishers are in charge-

Jennifer Prokop 00:54:08 / #:
Down the drain!

Sarah MacLean 00:54:09 / #:
Yeah, exactly.

00:54:11 / #:
Well, I feel that way, right? They're like, "Well, it would be great if this would just go away. Can we just make money off of you without giving you what you want? That's what we would like."

KJ Charles 00:54:21 / #:
Yeah, it is kind of baffling to me because my experience as an editor was very much simply that publishers will do basically anything for money. And I don't understand why it's the asterisk exception romance.

00:54:40 / #:
Especially the Mills have been, they were such a good publisher to work for in a lot of ways and they were completely led into what they were doing. We had an internet forum that where readers were encouraged to come on and talk to editors. We were literally so encouraged at work to sit there and chat with readers on the forums. That was a part of my job. I got paid for that and it's amazing. But they were groundbreaking and things like that.

Sarah MacLean 00:55:06 / #:
Well, it is interesting that you bring that up because it feels like those publishers, again, so you were editing for Mills & Boon in the 90's? No.

KJ Charles 00:55:17 / #:
Yeah, got to have been 20 years ago. Yeah.

Sarah MacLean 00:55:20 / #:
So at that time there were so few places for readers to find authors and publishers. Romance has always felt to me, the community of romance readers is so active and so eager to find each other because, I think, of the perception from the outside world that we're all like 'cat ladies' or sex-crazed. It's one or the other and there's both ends, the "listen, stop judging me". And so the idea being that because the outside world has this really negative perception of us as readers, when we find each other, we are so grateful to find each other. And the interaction, I think, speaking to my friends and colleagues who write, not right outside of romance, their relationship with readers is incredibly different than my relationship with readers. And I think that is something that's very special to romance. And so I'm sort of curious about how that world has shifted in your perception.

00:56:35 / #:
Because I remember before I was writing, Avon was doing similar things. Like there were boards, Tessa Dare and Courtney Milan and others came up through the Avon boards as they were writing Bridgerton fanfic essentially on the Avon boards. And then Avon had a fan-lit contest where Julia Quinn judged the finals.

Jennifer Prokop 00:57:02 / #:
Yeah.

KJ Charles 00:57:02 / #:
I mean that kind of thing was amazing. It was wonderful. I basically, I would be talking to people that I remember giving the call to somebody who was a regular on the Nelson Boone boards. And when we announced, it was wonderful because I got to do it in person, it was one of the best days of my life. I told that in person, she burst into tears. We were at a conference, she burst in into tears and she cried so hard that people were rushing up thinking she'd had news of her family's death.

Jennifer Prokop 00:57:27 / #:
I love it when they cry.

KJ Charles 00:57:30 / #:
Oh, it's great when they cry. Then we announced it on the Harlequin boards and they just exploded, the sheer joy. But it was also, and I had done it because it was a great book and she was a great writer and I loved doing it. But somebody described it as the best piece of PR Nelson Boone ever had. And it was because all of those people literally saw in real time that one of them, it could happen to you.

00:57:52 / #:
Because it did happen to her.

Sarah MacLean 00:57:55 / #:
Exactly.

KJ Charles 00:57:55 / #:
And it was joyous. It was absolutely joyous.

Sarah MacLean 00:57:59 / #:
And now I feel like the readership is binding us in so many different ways there, there's a constant sense of them being able to touch us on Twitter, on Goodreads, in all these different places. And I wonder if that's changed the way you think about writing.

00:58:20 / #:
I often wonder that about myself. Do I write differently because I'm interacting so much with readers? And this is a different question from the one that's going around on Twitter right now, which is, "What the purpose of reviews?" I don't want to talk about that.

KJ Charles 00:58:37 / #:
No, no.

Sarah MacLean 00:58:39 / #:
But I'm, I think a lot do think a lot about readers when I write.

KJ Charles 00:58:43 / #:
Well, you can't not.

Sarah MacLean 00:58:45 / #:
But I think a lot of writers don't at all. Jen and I have talked to however many and there is so many who are like "I don't think about them at all. I write for myself." I want to say for everyone out there, that's not me being, I'm not judging that, that's a way.

KJ Charles 00:58:59 / #:
No, it's an approach.

Sarah MacLean 00:59:02 / #:
Yeah.

KJ Charles 00:59:03 / #:
I totally get it. Because I know people who just, they don't want anything to do with social media, it's a time suck.

Sarah MacLean 00:59:08 / #:
Heads down.

KJ Charles 00:59:09 / #:
And I get people who say I couldn't write, I don't write, I don't write like messy, I don't have, it's one of the reasons I'm so firm on the reviews of readers. I'm not sitting here finding out what Blob 27 wants to say about, I don't care.

Sarah MacLean 00:59:24 / #:
Your mental health. I don't know how people survive that. Yeah.

KJ Charles 00:59:28 / #:
But yeah, no, I have absolutely. It's not a committee. Okay. Yeah. It's a benevolent dictatorship.

Sarah MacLean 00:59:36 / #:
Sometimes not even benevolent.

KJ Charles 00:59:37 / #:
It's [inaudible 00:59:39 / #] dictatorship, let's be real.

00:59:44 / #:
And yet, I have learned so much from readers' comments and really insightful things, which are not for me, but they are things I have seen because they scroll past on my timeline. And when you see someone who is really putting the work in to say, okay, here's this historical romance and this is why this was a misstep and this hit really badly and this hurt really badly. And you think, yeah, that is a misstep and it's potentially a misstep I could very easily have made and I'm really glad I didn't make it and I don't want to make it. And the world is full of missteps I could make. I feel like it's, on the one hand you could paralyze yourself. And on the other hand, I would rather not hurt somebody than hurt them. I don't want to hurt anyone. I don't want to say something stupid and crass if I can avoid it. I can say stupid crass things, but I'd rather not. So I think, I guess it's a fine line, isn't it?

Jennifer Prokop 01:00:43 / #:
I think strictly from a reader point of view, one of the ways I think romance has changed is that I grew up in a time of, I hid my romance novels. I think a lot of us did. Or I didn't have a community of romance readers because I grew up in a time where there was like, how was I going to find those people?

01:01:01 / #:
And so I do think one of the ways that romance has changed is that romance readers are no longer buying into the narrative of "this is something we should be ashamed of". And I often wonder if that doesn't trickle out in ways that say, as you've said, this hurt me and I don't come to romance to be hurt. There is an avenue for that to be heard. Not in a personal way like "this book isn't good", but in a right? And I do think that maybe that's what Sarah's talking about, writ large. You're more in touch with readers in a way. We didn't have that. I mean if you've been around long enough, you knew that this was a secret shame. You sulked down the library aisle or the bookstore aisle and got your books or you've got them sent to your house, there's a reason there's not send the thrillers to your house package.

01:01:57 / #:
Nobody needs that. Right. And I just think a lot about-

KJ Charles 01:01:59 / #:
Like a secret political science book.

Jennifer Prokop 01:02:02 / #:
The reader is more, we're more aware of the reader because readers are more aware of ourselves. I don't know.

Sarah MacLean 01:02:08 / #:
Yeah, I think that's true.

KJ Charles 01:02:10 / #:
But I also think people in general have just developed a much stronger idea that they can talk to creators and be talked back. I mean, you just look at that sort of powerful genre of memes. Where you've got some absolute idiots explaining to the creator of a TV show, what the TV show is about. I, so I think Twitter has almost given people this world idea possibility that you know, you can talk to your favorite author and they might interact with you and you say anything to, and yeah, quite often people are at me and I will reply and then they'll go, "I didn't think you'd reply!" It's like, but you literally talked to me!

Jennifer Prokop 01:02:50 / #:
I'm not rude.

KJ Charles 01:02:51 / #:
I'm British!

Sarah MacLean 01:02:54 / #:
Yeah. I mean one day you might talk to that person and then have a podcast with them. It's crazy.

KJ Charles 01:02:59 / #:
But I mean, this is not a binding guarantee that I will reply if someone at's me on Twitter.

Sarah MacLean 01:03:06 / #:
Oh my God.

KJ Charles 01:03:06 / #:
But I think the possibility of being sucked into the worlds of that is immensely strong. And especially if you don't have a fairly strong sense of self and a fairly, you need a tough hide for that kind of thing. I think if you are the kind of person who's always looking for feedback and who's devastated by a three star review or whatever, my only recommendation will be, stay the hell off social media altogether because it'll kill you. That's unfortunately just the way it is.

Jennifer Prokop 01:03:39 / #:
Are there books of yours that are fan favorites? Are there books that you hear about from your readers more than others?

Sarah MacLean 01:03:47 / #:
I mean, we obviously have our favorites here at Fated Mates, but.

KJ Charles 01:03:51 / #:
Yeah, there are. I mean the Magpie trilogy, which is my first ones, obviously they've been out the longest, but they also seem to have a place in library hearts that nothing will match.

Jennifer Prokop 01:04:03 / #:
It's always those first ones. And you're like, "I've written so many others!"

KJ Charles 01:04:07 / #:
I've got so many. Yeah, I've got more translations in those than anything else, it's now in 8 languages, which is nice. And tattoos, when people get tattoos, it's usually Magpie Lord. Tattoos. The first tattoo was really Terrifying. Yeah, it's amazing. It's just-

Sarah MacLean 01:04:24 / #:
See all the more reason for you to be worried about Twitter because then you're afraid, oh God, I'm going to say something someday.

Jennifer Prokop 01:04:29 / #:
And then these people have tattoos of my books.

Sarah MacLean 01:04:31 / #:
My only tattoo is of a James Joyce quote and he is not alive to really appreciate that about me.

KJ Charles 01:04:37 / #:
Yeah, but you know, he's also not going to get canceled then he'll feel dreadful. You have to strike it out and get canceled up wrong.

Sarah MacLean 01:04:44 / #:
I'd be like, god dammit.

KJ Charles 01:04:45 / #:
No, I think it's incredible. I see that and I still just sit there in white jaw, gob-smacked awe that this thing could possibly be happening.

Sarah MacLean 01:04:54 / #:
Amazing.

KJ Charles 01:04:55 / #:
Someone could react like that. Yeah. I think those are the ones that strike. Although, well, in fairness, there's three books in the tragedy and then there's two books in the extended world. So also I think people have a real opportunity to take a deep dive and roll around in the world, which is nice.

Jennifer Prokop 01:05:13 / #:
So to the same extent or a similar question, but from the other side, is there a book that you've written that you feel is the one, this is the one that 50 years from now, this is the KJ Charles book I wish everyone would read.

Sarah MacLean 01:05:29 / #:
When we talk about you, the way people talk about Georgette Heyer, like "this was the good one"-

KJ Charles 01:05:33 / #:
Oh, gosh, that's such a hard one, isn't it? Most of them have different things that I'm proud of. I mean, look, if you're asking me sort of which book am I proudest of? It's probably book three of my Will Darling series, solely because there was literally no way I was able to write that book because I published book one just at the start of the pandemic. And I had just finished writing book two when I was publishing one because it was it's self-pub and you can do that. And book three, I'm trying to write it in the pandemic, plus it's a book three of the same couple trilogy, and I put all that work in and I couldn't do the plot at all. It was really plotty. And there was another, and they couldn't decide on the, I mean you know what it was like writing in the pandemic - flipping mad.

01:06:20 / #:
But it had a murder mystery. And I wrote to the beginning with the same character. First he was the victim and then he was the murderer, and then he was the key witness and I had to write this over and I forget and I just couldn't write this bloody book.

Sarah MacLean 01:06:35 / #:
Plot is the worst.

KJ Charles 01:06:37 / #:
It took me 10 months. I cannot, I normally write a book in four months. It took me 10 months to write this. I had to stop and write a different book in the middle just to take my mind off things. So the fact that I finished it and the fact that lots of people, some people would, it's been reviewed as "her best book" kind of thing. I think, yeah, I will eternally be proud I did that.

01:06:59 / #:
I'm also actually incredibly proud of the Secret Lives as Country Gentleman, which is one that is coming out in March with Sourcebooks because that-

Sarah MacLean 01:07:08 / #:
It is tremendous. I was very lucky to be able to read it early.

KJ Charles 01:07:14 / #:
Well, I'm proud of it as a book. But I'm also immensely proud because I've published with Samhain and then I had six books with Love Swept, which were only published in E, which is an experience. [inaudible 01:07:31 / #] 2017 I basically switched to self-publishing and decided I didn't want anything to do with publishers ever again as long as I lived. And while, started looking to change that a few years later, so Secret Lives of Country Gentleman is now my first book that is coming out, coming primarily in print, this is obviously coming out in E, but Sourcebooks is print-led. Yeah, it's going to be on bookshelves, it's being promoted, it's had reviews in all the big journals, which is not something you'd get when you are self-published as a rule. And it is actually out there going, look, there is queer historical is on the shelves to buy being promoted by a publisher and being part of a tiny part, but a part of that wave of actually getting some representation out there. So I'm just hugely proud of that.

Sarah MacLean 01:08:23 / #:
Everyone, you can pre-order it now.

01:08:25 / #:
So one last question that we really like, because we feel like the history of romance is so unwritten. And we sort of mentioned this earlier, but when you think about the people that you've worked with that maybe are not, the unsung heroes of romance, are there people you worked with at Mills & Boon or people that you've worked with even as you self-published or at Samhain? We like to put the names in show notes just so that they show up in Google searches. These are people that we can sort of say, "hey, these people were an important part of making romance happen."

KJ Charles 01:09:05 / #:
Oh, it's hard isn't it, to sort of define.

Jennifer Prokop 01:09:10 / #:
It's giving an Oscar speech. Just get in the mood.

KJ Charles 01:09:15 / #:
So some of the authors I would think of, I named some of them before, but the people who have just dug in and written the books about, written the books that publishers weren't taking. So again, Jordan L Hawk and E.E. Ottoman, who were writing Trans Romance, and Jackie Lau and Talia Hibbert, who are writing diverse romance and who have driven through and become really successful.

01:09:46 / #:
And then you've got the authors of Trans Romance who are getting published now because that's happening in Karina. So you've got Penny Aimes and Kris Ripper and May Peterson and who are just leading the charge and pushing forwards. And I want them to explode, not literally I want them.

01:10:06 / #:
And actually also the people, because I mean Mills & Boon for a long time, Harlequin certainly when I came into romance, very white basically. It was pretty much very, very heavily white when I was there as an editor.

01:10:24 / #:
And then you've got people like Therese Beharrie and Jadesola James, Jeannie Lin was with them. People who were actually getting in there and changing things and being very visibly, writing books about, the price is an actual Nigerian prince, not the kind who sends emails, but your actual Nigerian price. And Teresa Harris writes, she's black, South African, and she writes books and yeah, she's also moving to traditional publishing out of category. But all those people, they fought so hard to be seen. And I want them all to be huge successes because they're also all wonderful writers. So that matters.

01:11:05 / #:
And then in terms of editors, the one who actually really leaps to mind, I wish I knew what she was doing now, is Anne Scott who was my editor at Samhain, and I say this because she gave me the single best piece of editorial advice I had ever received in my life. And one which I still think about and still becomes relevant every time I write a book. Cause I keep doing the same thing over and over again. But she basically just highlighted this passage and said, this reads like you are explaining the plot to yourself. And I've never been so seen in my life. Now I can see your face there. Yeah, exactly.

Jennifer Prokop 01:11:41 / #:
Oww.

KJ Charles 01:11:42 / #:
Yeah, but actually-

Jennifer Prokop 01:11:44 / #:
Also, yes, absolutely.

Sarah MacLean 01:11:46 / #:
Yeah. I'm going to write that down. That's a good thing to tell people.

Jennifer Prokop 01:11:49 / #:
Man, that happens in every book.

KJ Charles 01:11:52 / #:
But have an editor who will actually just sit there and say that to you and it as genuinely, every manuscript. And why is this so, period. Yeah. Why is this whole passage so slow and boring? Oh right, I'm doing it again.

Jennifer Prokop 01:12:05 / #:
I'm just recapping for myself because I took a little break.

KJ Charles 01:12:11 / #:
Yeah, exactly. It's shockingly easy to do, but when you get that kind of [inaudible 01:12:16 / #], you will never forget it. And I actually, I did a book called The Secret Casebook of Simon Feximal, which is framed as, the hero is a kind of Watson who writes stories about his lover, who he works with and is framed as letter to the editor. And I actually named the editor Henry Scott after Anne Scott because she just deserved to be immortalized.

01:12:37 / #:
But yeah, no, that kind of thing you just can't forget.

Sarah MacLean 01:12:41 / #:
That's a great piece of advice. Great advice.

Jennifer Prokop 01:12:44 / #:
We did a deep dive read along of Band Sinister so hopefully all of our readers have read a KJ Charles book, but if they haven't, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about what makes a KJ Charles book? Because you've written, so you've written all over the place in terms of, there's magic sometimes, there isn't magic, sometimes there's more, sometimes there's more romance, sometimes there's a murder, sometimes there's three books with the same couple. So I wonder, is there something that when you think about yourself and the way you write that you always get from KJ Charles?

KJ Charles 01:13:22 / #:
I have basically two taglines or taglines which have been bestowed on me. And one of them is romance with body counts, which is completely fair. Somebody did an infographic of deaths in my book and it's just horrifying.

Sarah MacLean 01:13:37 / #:
I'm going to find that.

KJ Charles 01:13:38 / #:
[inaudible 01:13:38 / #] and the different animals that people have been killed by and that kind of thing. So yeah, romance with body count, high murder levels, definitely. And the other one is HEA [inaudible 01:13:50 / #].

Jennifer Prokop 01:13:49 / #:
[inaudible 01:13:50 / #]

KJ Charles 01:13:49 / #:
It sums up everything I aspire to.

Jennifer Prokop 01:13:57 / #:
Oh my gosh. Put it on your tombstone.

KJ Charles 01:14:00 / #:
Oh totally.

Sarah MacLean 01:14:01 / #:
Tattoo worthy, I'll say it.

KJ Charles 01:14:02 / #:
Band Sinister is absolutely HEA BGA and the Will Darling Adventures is romance with body counts kind of thing. So those sort of sum up the kind of things I write, albeit over different time periods. But if I had to identify one element that was most present, it is probably the theme of a lonely person finding an alliance, friendships, loyalty, not just from their loved one, but in a larger group.

Jennifer Prokop 01:14:31 / #:
That's the right answer.

KJ Charles 01:14:32 / #:
And I toted it up because when I looked at your thing before, and as far as I can tell out of approximately 27 books, so far, 23 have [inaudible 01:14:45 / #]. So that's quite a lot. But it's so important because you've got, especially I'm A), I'm writing historicals about a time where there was no social safety net whatsoever. And if you didn't have a supportive family or a supportive community, you know, you were in so much trouble. And B), I'm writing about queer people who are, take that what I just said and multiply it by a factor of about 50. And it seems to me that a happy ending very often requires, you know, it takes a village fundamentally. So I seem to have a drive to give people their best friends and the new best friends and their group and the place where they feel at home. And it's not just with one person. Its got to be bigger than that. So I think that would be me.

Jennifer Prokop 01:15:34 / #:
We'll think about how to make that into something catchy like HEA BGA, not sure I'm up to the task, but that then you'd have three romance with a body count, HEA BGA and I'll keep working on it.

KJ Charles 01:15:46 / #:
I actually, one of, I did a series called Society of Gentlemen set in, it's a very realistic type regency world in that it's politics like cats in the sack and people like, being informed on and sent prison for their political views and revolution and so on. And one of the heroes who's a seditionist, and one of the things he repeats throughout the book is, "I don't inform". Its his catchphrase. He does not inform, it doesn't matter what he do to him, he's going to be absolutely loyal to his friends.

Jennifer Prokop 01:16:20 / #:
That's A Seditious Affair, right?

KJ Charles 01:16:22 / #:
That's A Seditious Affair. Yes.

Jennifer Prokop 01:16:23 / #:
That's my favorite of that series.

KJ Charles 01:16:25 / #:
Yeah, I enjoyed writing that so much.

Jennifer Prokop 01:16:27 / #:
Silas and Dominic, and they're perfect in all ways.

KJ Charles 01:16:32 / #:
I really enjoyed writing that one because it's got a lot of the things that I write about a lot, like class difference, which is absolutely huge there and money difference. But also what to do when you've got genuinely opposing points of view. Because I really feel that most of the time a conflict isn't one person who's right and one person who's wrong. There's people who came at it from a completely different point of view and have to reconcile those points of view. And one of them going, I'm sorry, I was totally wrong. It's easier. But it's not how it works. Yeah. So I'm very proud of that one.

Sarah MacLean 01:17:09 / #:
We are pro-conflict here at Fated Mates. So on the record.

01:17:14 / #:
KJ, this was wonderful. Thank you so much.

KJ Charles 01:17:17 / #:
Pleasure. Thank you for asking me.

Jennifer Prokop 01:17:18 / #:
And talking about your life in romance and your thoughts. We, I'm, I love every time you write along a long form piece about what's wrong with writing in romance. Well, and I will say mean, we didn't mention it, but KJ's blog is, if you want to write romance and you are not reading it, you are doing it wrong. And as an editor, if you are an editor and not giving people, I'm often read this, read this because it's so great. I mean that's the thing I feel like your editor's eye, you can see in the things that you write yourself, but also in the way that you talk about books you've read. I just, we're lucky to have you.

KJ Charles 01:18:00 / #:
Well I'm, I've really scratched my itch I missed being an editor. I loved being an editor.

01:18:03 / #:
Well, I really scratched my itch because I miss being an editor. I loved being an editor. And if they would only pay me enough, I would still be an editor. But it's the way I scratch my itch to talk authoritatively about books these days is in large part by blogging. And plus, I also find that if I blog on a subject that I'm sort of noodling about in my own writing, I often find... My granddad used to say it, say, how do I know what I think 'til I hear what I say? And I feel that may be what I'm doing.

Jennifer Prokop 01:18:29 / #:
That's perfect. No, we do that too. I feel like whenever I'm in deep in a book, I'm like, "Jen, can we do an interstitial about this thing that I'm working on?"

KJ Charles 01:18:37 / #:
Yeah, exactly.

Jennifer Prokop 01:18:38 / #:
So that I can read a bunch of books and then noodle it.

KJ Charles 01:18:41 / #:
Yeah. And you talk about it, but you're not talking about yourself. You're just talking about the problem abstractly. And lo and behold, it turns out that, you know?

Jennifer Prokop 01:18:48 / #:
Yeah, right. That's when the solution appears.

KJ Charles 01:18:50 / #:
That's what I think. Thank God, I knew it was something.

Jennifer Prokop 01:18:56 / #:
Well, thank you so much for being with us. What an amazing conversation. And we wish you the best of luck with the Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen, which is, as I said, tremendous.

KJ Charles 01:19:07 / #:
Thank you.

Jennifer Prokop 01:19:08 / #:
And you should all go read it immediately. I had a whole lot of joy reading it. March 7th.

Sarah MacLean 01:19:14 / #:
March 7th. Thanks, KJ.

KJ Charles 01:19:16 / #:
Excellent. Well, thank you very much for having me. That was lovely.

Sarah MacLean 01:19:21 / #:
What a delight.

Jennifer Prokop 01:19:23 / #:
Oh, she's the greatest.

Sarah MacLean 01:19:24 / #:
She's so fun.

Jennifer Prokop 01:19:26 / #:
Yeah, yeah. So during the pandemic, Joanna Shupe has a Facebook group. If you love historical romance, the League of Extraordinary Historical Romance Writers, and readers can be in that space too. And so it's a really fun group. And during the pandemic, I hosted a bunch of Zoom chats. Remember how desperate we were to just talk about things? And KJ was on once and I was like, "Oh, wow, this is great." And so, one of the things, can we talk about her working at Mills and Boon Stories? So awesome.

Sarah MacLean 01:20:04 / #:
I know. And so, one of the things that I just realized before we started recording the intro and the outro for this episode is we didn't say this, but I'm sure most of that Mills and Boone is Harlequin.

Jennifer Prokop 01:20:20 / #:
Right.

Sarah MacLean 01:20:20 / #:
It's just called Mills and Boon in the UK, Australia, Canada. Although I think now in Canada it's Harlequin. I don't know. Don't quote me on that. But Mills and Boon and Harlequin are crossover publishers. So presents that are published by Mills and Boon can be published by Harlequin, et cetera. I wish I'd thought to push her more on talking more about medicals because I would really like to know why medicals aren't an American thing. Don't really sell over here because I love a doctor, as you know.

Jennifer Prokop 01:20:54 / #:
I really honestly do feel like it maybe... I joked about ER, but I do think that maybe it's a different... I think maybe American TV has trained us to expect a different kind of medical thing happening.

Sarah MacLean 01:21:07 / #:
Interesting. See, what I immediately thought of was does this have something to do with insurance?

Jennifer Prokop 01:21:13 / #:
Well, sure. Nothing... Yeah.

Sarah MacLean 01:21:15 / #:
Because medical issues are so much more stressful for Americans than they are for people in all the rest of the world because we have to worry about costs.

Jennifer Prokop 01:21:23 / #:
Yeah, maybe. Maybe.

Sarah MacLean 01:21:25 / #:
But I don't know that. That just went to a bleak place. Anyway, I get universal healthcare, everybody. Vote for politicians who want to give you healthcare.

Jennifer Prokop 01:21:35 / #:
A whole new romance world will open up to us.

Sarah MacLean 01:21:37 / #:
Imagine. Imagine if that happened, if we go universal healthcare and an entire new world of contemporary romance.

Jennifer Prokop 01:21:44 / #:
What a world.

Sarah MacLean 01:21:45 / #:
Listen, that's what they should do. They should put out commercials like that in election season.

Jennifer Prokop 01:21:50 / #:
Yeah. I think the thing that also, when I think of if, look, I love KJ Charles's books. Obviously we've talked about Band Sinister's my favorite, but there are writers who have different strengths. And one of the things about KJ Charles's books is they are impeccably plotted and the pacing is perfect and all of the emotional beats. KJ Charles, as we like to say, really knows the job. And so it was really fascinating to hear her talk about learning the neural pathways literally being retrained, right?

Sarah MacLean 01:22:26 / #:
Yeah. Spending years writing, spending years editing category has to hone that skill better than really anything else, I would think.

Jennifer Prokop 01:22:37 / #:
Absolutely.

Sarah MacLean 01:22:39 / #:
I talked about this when we did the Band Sinister episode, but there's just no, there's nothing extra in those books. Every word is placed intentionally. Every plot point is intentional. I was really fascinated, I was truly incredibly fascinated by her talking about Heyer and how Heyer has really influenced her work. And that, of course, is because when we think about Heyer now, when we look back on it, Heyer's sort of a problematic antecedent, right?

Jennifer Prokop 01:23:10 / #:
Yeah.

Sarah MacLean 01:23:10 / #:
And for all of us, and I think what was really interesting to me when she talks about Heyer is how much she acknowledged queer coding in hair.

Jennifer Prokop 01:23:19 / #:
Yes.

Sarah MacLean 01:23:20 / #:
Which is not a thing I have ever thought about. Obviously when we talk about cross-dressing heroines and a lot of those things that were so essential to romance and continue to be really constant in historicals, it's never really given... I've never thought about them... I've thought about them coming from Heyer, but I've never thought about them coming from Heyer and being possibly intentionally coded in Heyer. And it made me think, gosh, I wish KJ would write the introductions to a bunch of these Heyers. So if you're a publisher out there, now You know who to talk to.

01:24:05 / #:
Planning to republish Heyers.

Jennifer Prokop 01:24:09 / #:
Yeah.

Sarah MacLean 01:24:10 / #:
Hit up KJ to write some of them, the introductions.

Jennifer Prokop 01:24:12 / #:
I think that this is something, and again, we are two straight ladies talking about this, so I don't want to-

Sarah MacLean 01:24:18 / #:
Yeah, of course.

Jennifer Prokop 01:24:19 / #:
-misstep, but I have thought a lot about what she was talking about. These books have existed for a long time, but in small press runs, and with Vincent Avera in specific bookstores, knowing, so how to get those books into your life was charged. And so I think a lot about how angry I am that people are realizing, oh, this is dangerous. And these movements to remove queer coded... Not queer coded books, queer books. Doesn't have to be coded anymore.

Sarah MacLean 01:24:56 / #:
We don't have to queer code anymore, although I think we are going to start seeing it.

Jennifer Prokop 01:25:00 / #:
I just can't get over... I don't know, I'm so upset about us going backwards and I'm so upset about the kids who had to look for queer coding because queerness explicitly didn't exist. And it's just so wrong to be taking that back from young readers, from any readers.

Sarah MacLean 01:25:21 / #:
Absolutely. I want to pause in our KJ discussion to just say to everyone, if you have not listened to our book banning episode, and I know there were lots of reasons why people maybe skipped that episode, but it is so important to hear the voices of those people who are being impacted directly by book banning. And so we have it, we'll put links and show notes to it. It sits now on the main page of fatedmates.net so that everybody can access it, but I encourage you to go listen to that episode so that you can get more informed about what is actually happening in the world right now, in the United States especially.

01:26:05 / #:
I thought that was really interesting. I really thought, I was interested in the way that, in the way she talks about historicals. We talked about this too, that there are two schools of historicals, the historicals that are maybe more historical fantasy without magic, as she said. And then what she writes, which is more historical romance purely. And I think that she threaded a really interesting needle there. And I do think there are really interesting things happening on both sides of that line.

Jennifer Prokop 01:26:42 / #:
Right. And I think I love historical, God, I love historical so much, and I feel like there's such refuge for me, and it sounds like for KJ too, in thinking about who we are now through the lens of who we were then, that's such a powerful way to think about the differences. And also what I really loved is I think one of the things you and I is romance is fun. Romance is fun.

Sarah MacLean 01:27:09 / #:
It should be fun, yeah.

Jennifer Prokop 01:27:11 / #:
It should be fun. And it doesn't always have to be fun. That's not the only mood that romance kind of can be in, but I really loved, because that's one of the things I think about KJ's books, is you are in for a good time reading those books.

Sarah MacLean 01:27:26 / #:
Yeah, they rollick.

Jennifer Prokop 01:27:27 / #:
Yes, exactly. And I think that that's part of the... It's nice to hear a author who is so committed to romance being fun, talk about what that means and what that looks like and how you get there. And then to hear that readers respond to it is so powerful. Right?

Sarah MacLean 01:27:47 / #:
I think she wasn't giving herself enough credit when she talked about how readers interact with her texts because I think reading KJ's remarkable books with her communities of supportive communities of characters, and the way love is just so beautifully represented in all of these books. She just does it so, so well. She's one of the best of us undeniably. And I think for readers, there is such power in that.

01:28:26 / #:
And I imagine back in the day when Samhain was producing some of the only eBooks that you could find that were romance KJ must have been incredibly transformational for a lot of readers.

Jennifer Prokop 01:28:46 / #:
Yeah. I think a lot about it because one of the things I feel is sometimes romance authors develop secondary characters only as bait for later books. And look, God, trust me, I love it. But that is not what KJ Charles is doing. And I think it's really important in terms of from a writing standpoint to really state that. Every single character in her books is there to be themself, not there to just be like, "I'm here to support the other characters," or, " I'm here to be background," or, "I'm here for a future book." And I really think that that's a hallmark of her style to me, is how well-developed it all is. No one's there just for a reason. And I think if you're interested as a writer yourself about how to do good secondary character work, you should be reading KJ Charles.

Sarah MacLean 01:29:53 / #:
Oh, a thousand percent. You should be reading KJ Charles for a lot of reasons. Her incredible plotting.

Jennifer Prokop 01:30:04 / #:
Yes.

Sarah MacLean 01:30:05 / #:
And this sounds like you're explaining the plot to yourself, is like, oh, yes, I felt harmed by that, but the truth is that her plotting is so clean. And I don't know if it happens on the first draft or if it happens later, but the way her plots come together is so tidy. And we talked about this, we're sort of rehashing the deep dive that we did, but hearing her talk about process in that way was really valuable.

01:30:37 / #:
And I think also one of the things that she seemed to be able to do, she seems to have been able to do with her career, is really write all around. You really get the sense from her that as difficult as it has been in terms of it sounds like her publishing journey has been not great all the time, and certainly losing your publisher, your publisher closing, having a terrible relationship with your publishers can really impact what you end up writing. It sounds like for her, it has also been really, it allowed her to really explore.

Jennifer Prokop 01:31:18 / #:
Is this the first predominantly self-published author we've had on?

Sarah MacLean 01:31:22 / #:
Well, we had E.E. on.

Jennifer Prokop 01:31:23 / #:
As a trailblazer? Oh, and E.E. Ottoman. And that's probably not a mistake, right?

Sarah MacLean 01:31:30 / #:
And Radcliffe. If you think about our queer-

Jennifer Prokop 01:31:32 / #:
Oh, yeah. Right.

Sarah MacLean 01:31:33 / #:
-guests. With the exception of Vincent, but that's just because it didn't exist probably when-

Jennifer Prokop 01:31:38 / #:
Sure.

Sarah MacLean 01:31:39 / #:
It definitely did not exist when Vincent was writing.

Jennifer Prokop 01:31:42 / #:
And I think that this is the thing where we haven't really... I think we are agnostic. When we talk about books, we're just like, "This is a good book." We're not really talking about necessarily the pipeline that brought it to your Kindle or to your door. I think that when we think about this time in romance, the ability to self-publish, the gatekeeping that exists that then people can circumvent is going to bring us books like KJ Charles, like E.E. Ottoman, like May Peterson. These are books that... And then because of the success of these authors, then we can see how traditional publishing is like, "Oh, there is a market for this." That whole discussion of the ways publishing is like, "Well, if this sold already, we'd already be selling it."

01:32:32 / #:
And I think that the only, in that way, self-publishing has been such a gift, not just to the romance community, but just to all readers. I can read books now that I didn't know I would love because publishing didn't think I would buy it. And I think that that part, talking about the journey from traditional, a kind of traditional independent publisher Samhain, down to the Riptide dream spinner, this has been a circuitous route. And it's hard to see, I don't know how to say this, the whole story until it's later, but I think that we're going to really look back on self-publishing as it gives and it takes.

Sarah MacLean 01:33:25 / #:
You and I come at romance with a very keen sense of we have to know the past in order to understand what's going on. I don't think everybody comes to romance that way, and I don't think everybody has to. But I think for you and me, there is a very real sense of the history informing the present. Right?

Jennifer Prokop 01:33:44 / #:
Right.

Sarah MacLean 01:33:46 / #:
And I think people like KJ teach us that... I just don't believe that indie publishing would be where it is if not for those small presses at the beginning. And I think that that is because those small presses, they rode that line between traditional publishing and the structure of traditional publishing and the timeline of traditional publishing and where we are now. And so I think that we are very lucky to have had authors like KJ come up through those publishers because I don't think that if we'd sort of immediately gone into what we are, where we are now with a giant pool and everybody just throws their stuff into it, we would have the kind of discoverability that we do.

Jennifer Prokop 01:34:45 / #:
Well, and I think that this is also, I'm thinking a lot about what she was talking about in terms of her readers, the letter she gets from readers, and everyone, you couldn't see her, right? But it was like this is clearly something that moved her deeply. It moved me to hear her talk about it. And I think that this is the part where what has in many seasons of Faded Mates, I hope what people really understand is reading has made me who I am. If you're a reader, the things you read are changing, are making you who you are, realizing who you are at all kinds of levels. And I just found it really beautiful to think that self-publishing, cutting out those gatekeepers has just made room in the world for people who in romance, in the readership in the world, who they are.

01:35:43 / #:
I don't know. I just get on my high horse about romance, how beautiful it is, how much it means to me to know that, I don't know, there's nothing more important about who you are in the world than how you feel about yourself and who you are allowed to love. Right?

Sarah MacLean 01:35:59 / #:
I don't know.

Jennifer Prokop 01:36:01 / #:
Yeah. And I just was very moved by the idea that people who have, we've talked about letters, people, authors get from readers who are like, "I don't like it when you swear." But you know what? Maybe that's worth it. Who cares about those letters in comparison to...

Sarah MacLean 01:36:19 / #:
Yeah. And I do think we are living in a really fascinating age of romance, and you and I talk about all the different ways that that is true, and it's not all good, but the thing that is good is how easy it is to find yourself in the books now.

01:36:43 / #:
I also think we didn't say this with her, and I wish we had, because I do believe that she herself may be responsible for a lot of how historical romance is tackling queerness.

Jennifer Prokop 01:37:00 / #:
Oh, yeah.

Sarah MacLean 01:37:02 / #:
And I mean that as the difference, the sheer difference between even the nineties and early thousands and the way historicals would use queerness as a weapon versus now you do see characters in romance in historical more. You don't see them as protagonists all the time, but you see them as secondary characters more, tertiary characters more. And I think KJ is a big, big reason why, I think so many of us have looked to her books as remarkable texts and also a brilliant model for how to try to do this right.

Jennifer Prokop 01:37:51 / #:
Yeah.

Sarah MacLean 01:37:52 / #:
And I think that's why we wanted her on. Well, we're rethinking the way we think about trailblazers. We want very much to be collected. The theory of this batch of episodes, the series, is that we wanted to make sure we had a lot of these voices. And of course, for us, we want to make sure we get the older voices as quickly as we can for lots of reasons. But that doesn't mean that... But KJ is a perfect example as of somebody who has transformed the genre.

Jennifer Prokop 01:38:29 / #:
Yes, right. As a reader. It's funny because we've been talking, this is not related necessarily to exactly to KJ Charles, but I had this moment this week where I was kind of like, "What is it I value as a romance reader, a longtime romance reader?" We see so many new readers. It's really exciting in so many ways. But I had this moment where I just realized what I really value is people who have a lot of interesting ideas. I just want to read your books if you have interesting ideas. And I joked about the book about the taxidermist, because if you had told me that I would love a book about taxidermy, I don't think I would've believed you. And yet, obviously it's just a set piece in some ways.

01:39:15 / #:
But her interests, I'm kind of glad I brought up to her talking about how interested she became in it. And I think that that's the thing about KJ. When she said, "I have 27 books," or whatever it is, they're not all the same. Not even close, none of them to them. And I think that that's one of the reasons I think of her as one of my favorite authors, is obviously she just does romance so well, but also she is always doing something interesting herself. I can see her challenging herself, and that is challenging and exciting to me.

Sarah MacLean 01:39:49 / #:
And what's fascinating is when she listed the authors who she thought were important for us to name, almost all of those authors also do different things every time.

Jennifer Prokop 01:40:02 / #:
Yes, right.

Sarah MacLean 01:40:03 / #:
Right?

Jennifer Prokop 01:40:04 / #:
Right.

Sarah MacLean 01:40:04 / #:
Alexis Hall has never written the same book twice. So there's a fascinating... She is drawn to other authors who are doing, who exploring.

Jennifer Prokop 01:40:16 / #:
Yeah.

01:40:18 / #:
And that's the thing I feel like when I think about trailblazers, to me, I think when we first started, it was kind of you were the first, obviously these are the people who are the first to do something or riding the wave of being the first to do something. But I also think as our thinking has changed, it's kind of like, who has figured out a way to write 27 books and keep it fresh? Who has figured out the way? And that is valuable to me because I think that's how we talk about, as she said, it's a huge big tent, right? Romance is huge. So who are the people that are out there pushing on the corners? I'm interested in how they just think about their work and what they do.

Sarah MacLean 01:41:04 / #:
All right, well, another trailblazer in the can, as they say. Everyone, this is Faded Mates. Don't forget Faded Mates Live is March 24th in New York City. We would love to see you, bring your friends. Tickets and more information at fadedmates.net/live. Next week, we've got an interstitial for you.

Jennifer Prokop 01:41:28 / #:
Yeah. And I would like to just say quick shout out and thank you to Lumi Labs and Kylie Scott for sponsoring this week's episode.

Sarah MacLean 01:41:37 / #:
We're thrilled to have you all. I'm Sarah MacLean I'm here with my friend Jen Prokop. You can find us every week at fadedmates.net, on Twitter @fadedmates, on Instagram @fadedmatespod. We will see you next week.

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S05.17: Catherine Coulter: Trailblazer

We’re thrilled to share our next Trailblazer episode this week—we had a great time talking with Catherine Coulter about her place in romance history as one of the earliest authors of the Signet Regency line—and the author who many believe revolutionized the Regency…by making them sexy.

She tells a million great stories here, and we talk about writing historical romance, about sex in romance, about the way she thinks about plot vs. story, about the way she’s evolved as a writer, and about revisiting her old books. All that, and Catherine has a lot to say about heroes. Thank you to Catherine Coulter for making the time for us.

Transcript available

Next week, we’re back with more interstitials, but our first read along of 2023 is Tracy MacNish’s Stealing Midnight—we’ve heard the calls from our gothic romance readers and we’re delivering with this truly bananas story, in which the hero is dug out of a grave and delivered, barely alive, to the heroine. Get ready. You can find Stealing Midnight (for $1.99!) at Amazon, B&N, Kobo, or Apple Books.

Show Notes

People Mentioned: publisher Peter Heggie, agent Robert Gottlieb, publisher Robert Diforio, editor Hilary Ross, editor Leslie Gelbman, publisher Phyllis Grann, editor May Chen, editor David Highfill, and marketing consultant Nicole Robson at Trident Media.

Authors Mentioned: Georgette Heyer, Rebecca Brandewyne, Janet Dailey, LaVyrle Spencer, Linda Howard, Iris Johansen, Kay Hooper, Debbie Gordon and Joan Wolf

 

Catherine Coulter Novels

Sponsors

Cara Dion, author of Indiscreet.
get it at Amazon, free on Kindle Unlimited,
and
Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies
Visit microdose.com and use the code FATEDMATES
for 30% off and free shipping on your order.

TRANSCRIPT

Catherine Coulter 00:00:00 / #: At that point in time, Signet had sort of developed as kind of the classiest of the Regency romances, and there were some other little attempts, but with Signet, even their print runs, which were considered quite healthy, then were like, for the Regency, they were like 60,000. Then on the second book, I remember having, I got the plot idea and I told Hilary, we were down in Wall Street at a restaurant and we were having lunch. I said, well, Hilary, I said, the only thing is there was no sex in Regency.

00:00:49 / #: Absolutely zippo, nada. I said, I've got a plot, Hilary, but I want sex in it. It was at that point, which rarely happens, but it was an utter lack of noise in the restaurant, and everybody was on point, and we got a good laugh out of that. I told her what I wanted to do and she grinned and she said, go for it. As a result, the print run jumped up to like 130,000.

Jennifer Prokop 00:01:26 / #: That was the voice of Catherine Coulter, author of more than 80 novels, including some of the earliest Signet Regencies. We'll talk with Catherine about her time at the beginning of the Signet Line, her work, adding sex to Signet Regencies, and how she evolved into historical romances, and then of course into her longstanding career as a thriller writer. This is Fated Mates. I'm Jennifer Prokop, a romance reader and editor.

Sarah MacLean 00:01:59 / #: I'm Sarah MacLean. I read romance novels and I write them.

Jennifer Prokop 00:02:04 / #: You're about to hear a great conversation with Catherine Coulter. We're not going to spend a whole lot more time introducing it. We'll talk more on the back end. Without further ado, here is our conversation with Catherine Coulter.

Sarah MacLean 00:02:17 / #: We try really hard not to do all the fangirling, but I have to say The Sherbrooke Bride was like the Greatest Joy of my Life when I read that book, right when it came out. I'm really very delighted to be talking to you today. Thank you so much for making time for us.

Catherine Coulter 00:02:37 / #: Well, thank you for asking me, and I'm so delighted that you like The Sherbrooke Bride. It seems to be everybody's favorite, and it's an 11 book series.

Sarah MacLean 00:02:47 / #: Well, we're going to get into why and why you think it is. We are in our fourth season of this podcast, because we really love romance novels a whole lot. Over the last year, we have been interviewing the people, many of the people who we believe built the house of romance, so to speak. Part of the reason why we're doing that, and I'm sure you've noticed this, is that romance doesn't get a whole lot of attention from the world at large.

00:03:18 / #: We feel like it's really important to collect the history of the genre as much as we possibly can. These conversations, these, what we're calling Trailblazer recordings are really conversations that are very far-reaching. We want to talk about all things you. I know that you have a book out next week, so we want to talk about that too. But hopefully, you'll give us a sense of your life through writing and through romance. But we are both really thrilled to have you.

Catherine Coulter 00:03:52 / #: Well, thank you very much. Those were lovely things to say. It's true, it's true. I'll never forget when I was started writing, "Oh yes, I'm a writer." "What do you write, children's books?" That was the most regular. Then, I think romance was next. You were almost embarrassed to say, "Well, yeah, you idiot." I want to make some money. Women are 85% of the retail market, so, excuse me.

Sarah MacLean 00:04:27 / #: Yeah.

Jennifer Prokop 00:04:27 / #: Yeah.

Catherine Coulter 00:04:27 / #: Anyway.

Sarah MacLean 00:04:28 / #: Yeah.

Catherine Coulter 00:04:29 / #: I think you guys are doing a wonderful thing and getting the history down. That's very good.

Sarah MacLean 00:04:35 / #: Catherine, can you tell us about how you started reading romance?

Catherine Coulter 00:04:42 / #: Well, my mother would read aloud to me when I was like three years old, and she read everything, everything. But my very, very favorite author is Georgette Heyer, and I believe she died in 1972. She was the one who started the Regency genre. You've read her right?

Sarah MacLean 00:05:09 / #: Yes.

Jennifer Prokop 00:05:10 / #: Yes. Yes. We know Heyer.

Catherine Coulter 00:05:11 / #: Okay. Yeah, I still think she's the class act, and I've always in teaching always say, you're allowed three exclamation points a book. Okay, that's it. She uses exclamation points after nearly every sentence.

Sarah MacLean 00:05:29 / #: Exactly.

Catherine Coulter 00:05:30 / #: But it's okay. It's the weirdest thing. She does everything that you shouldn't do, and it's wonderful, which goes to show there really are no rules.

Sarah MacLean 00:05:41 / #: Right.

Catherine Coulter 00:05:41 / #: But I don't think many people are on her level of just delight. Sheer delight. What was your favorite Georgette Heyer?

Sarah MacLean 00:05:51 / #: Well, my favorite is Devil's Cub.

Catherine Coulter 00:05:55 / #: Gotcha. That was a good one.

Sarah MacLean 00:05:57 / #: Which probably tracks very well with, you'll be unsurprised that then I really fell in love with The Sherbrooke Bride and lots of other books with similar heroes to her.

Catherine Coulter 00:06:10 / #: We call them assholes or someone we deem not all that much.

Sarah MacLean 00:06:17 / #: Yeah. Well, romance in many ways has not changed all that much. Right?

Jennifer Prokop 00:06:24 / #: What about you, Catherine? What was your favorite Heyer?

Catherine Coulter 00:06:28 / #: The Grand Sophy.

Jennifer Prokop 00:06:29 / #: Oh, of course. A classic.

Catherine Coulter 00:06:31 / #: Yeah. I just love The Grand Sophy. She was such a go-getter and Sylvester or The Wicked Uncle, talk about the classic asshole. It's wonderful.

Jennifer Prokop 00:06:43 / #: Okay, so you are reading Heyer and you're reading sort of voraciously. Tell us about your life at this point. Where are you living in the world? How do you start thinking about actually putting pen to paper?

Catherine Coulter 00:06:59 / #: Well, as you know, everybody has a talent, and it just depends if you, A, find the talent, B, if you try to do something with it. My talent was writing, but I never really recognized it. I just thought everybody could write a paper the night before and get an A. It was just very natural. It was just very natural. You really didn't understand why your classmates hated your guts, but they could do that. They could do their own thing.

00:07:30 / #: Anyway, I never really thought about it. Then, I went to University of Texas and then got a master's degree at Boston College. At that point, my husband was in medical school in Columbia Presbyterian in Manhattan. One thing, I've been extraordinarily lucky, you know how when you don't know if you should go one direction or another?

Jennifer Prokop 00:08:00 / #: Mm-hmm.

Catherine Coulter 00:08:01 / #: Then you might go the one direction and you think, "Well, what would've happened if I had... Well..." Anyway, it's at the same time, I was offered an assistant professorship at a college in New Jersey, and then the other was a speech writing job on Wall Street in Manhattan. I got to weigh both of them.

00:08:22 / #: My dad had been a professor at UT, and he would tell me that academia is the most, it's a viper pit. He said, "I've never seen anything like it. They cannot compare, businesses cannot compare to the viper pit that is academia.

Sarah MacLean 00:08:40 / #: Even Wall Street?

Jennifer Prokop 00:08:42 / #: Yeah, wow.

Catherine Coulter 00:08:43 / #: I chose Wall Street and I wrote speeches and for a guy who was the president of an actuarial firm, and your eyes are already glazing over, mind did. But I'll never forget in the interview, he was this kind of desiccated little old guy. He was very nice, and he was the president and he said, "I have to speak a lot." He says, "I don't know why people ask me to speak, because I'm not very good." He said, "Can you make me funny?"

00:09:12 / #: I said, "Sure, sure." Then at that time, my husband, as I said, was at Columbia Presbyterian. I saw him maybe 30 minutes a day over spaghetti. I was reading, oh, 10 to 15 books a week in the evening. Then one night I threw the book across the room and said, "I can do better." I thought that I was so, I thought that I was a trailblazer, that nobody had ever done that.

Sarah MacLean 00:09:42 / #: Now look.

Catherine Coulter 00:09:42 / #: Well, it turns out that maybe 60% of writers started that way. "I can do better." I went in and told my husband and I have heard from so many women and I just want to take them out and shoot them. "Oh, well, my husband won't let me do blah, blah, blah." I go, "Oh, shut up." Kick the jerk to the curb. He said, "Sure." He took the next weekend off and together we plotted the first and last book, but that was the last one he helped plot.

Jennifer Prokop 00:10:16 / #: Yeah.

Sarah MacLean 00:10:16 / #: Oh, my gosh.

Catherine Coulter 00:10:18 / #: That was, what was the name of that? The Autumn Countess, which I later rewrote and made it into The Countess, which is much, much better, because it's funny. That's how it started.

Sarah MacLean 00:10:30 / #: That book was published in 1979. Were you read, is that right around, was it very quickly published?

Catherine Coulter 00:10:37 / #: Well, what happened was is since I was working full time, I would get up and write at like 4:30 and then get ready for work at 6:30. I've always been a morning person, so that worked for me. I took about a year. I'll never forget, I rode the A train, it's the express, down to Wall Street. There was this guy who worked at William Morrow.

00:11:03 / #: I said, "Oh, I'm writing a book." "Yeah right, honey." I think at the time, he wanted to get in my pants, and so he was all sorts of encouraging and nice. What he did was he gave me the name of a freelance editor in the city, and she was also a model. Of course at that time, nobody knew anything and nobody knew anything until RWA was founded-

Jennifer Prokop 00:11:33 / #: Right.

Catherine Coulter 00:11:33 / #: ... in the early 80s.

Sarah MacLean 00:11:34 / #: Right.

Catherine Coulter 00:11:35 / #: And that's when things started opening up. But at that time, it was a black hole, publishing, but I was at least in the center of it.

Jennifer Prokop 00:11:43 / #: You were reading romance novels at this point? So you-

Catherine Coulter 00:11:46 / #: Well, I read that, but I don't know if you know this, but I would say that a good 90%, maybe more, of all of my books have mysteries in them.

Jennifer Prokop 00:11:57 / #: Right.

Sarah MacLean 00:11:57 / #: Right. Yes.

Catherine Coulter 00:12:00 / #: I love mysteries. It was just a natural thing to have mysteries in it. I read tons of mysteries and I read, and there were the early bodice rippers, which were a hoot. We have the 18-year-old virgin at the beginning, she loses her virginity, he's the hero. They're separated for 500 pages and then they get together at the end. Oh, I love you. They were wonderful. They were absolutely incredible.

00:12:29 / #: This editor said, "Well, let's go for it." What she had was the top Regency publishers and the top editors. At the time it was New American Library, they had the class act with Signet Regencies, and they were the only really class act in publishing. You can now take courses on writing query letters, you know 101.

Jennifer Prokop 00:12:58 / #: Yeah.

Catherine Coulter 00:12:58 / #: I like, well, dear boss, this is my book. I hope you like it. It's so stupid. Again, you never know. There are usually three reasons why you're bought in a house, back then and now. Number one is a whole lot of writers, the majority of writers are always late. The writers under contract are always late turning in manuscripts. They're going, "Ah, what are we going to do? What are we going to do?"

Jennifer Prokop 00:13:32 / #: You just called out Sarah real hard and it's pretty amazing.

Catherine Coulter 00:13:35 / #: Sarah, come here and let me smack you.

Sarah MacLean 00:13:39 / #: I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Catherine. I'm sorry.

Jennifer Prokop 00:13:42 / #: Meet your deadline, Sarah.

Catherine Coulter 00:13:43 / #: Oh, well, you drive a house crazy, because then they're having to do this, that and the other. Or they might buy a book because they really, really love it. But those are the two main reasons. I really don't know which one I was.

Jennifer Prokop 00:13:59 / #: Oh, I know.

Catherine Coulter 00:14:01 / #: Well, Hilary Ross called me three days later, asked me out to lunch and offered me a three book contract. I was very, very lucky. She loves to tell the story how she pulled me up by my bootstrap son of a bitch. That could have been true, I guess. She still lives on the West Side of New York.

Jennifer Prokop 00:14:25 / #: Oh, that's great.

Catherine Coulter 00:14:26 / #: She was a character, and so it was very strange. But she loved my book, so what can I do, but love her back?

Jennifer Prokop 00:14:33 / #: Of course.

Catherine Coulter 00:14:34 / #: I didn't have an agent. When the three book contract was coming up, because I was such an idiot and didn't know anything, I asked my editor if she could recommend an agent. She recommended a very good friend of hers. I realized that I could have negotiated myself a better contract. That's how it all started.

Jennifer Prokop 00:15:00 / #: Hilary Ross, did she found the New American Library. For people who don't know, New American Library became Signet, correct?

Catherine Coulter 00:15:08 / #: No, no, no. New American Library was subsumed by Putnam.

Jennifer Prokop 00:15:13 / #: Okay.

Catherine Coulter 00:15:14 / #: Okay?

Jennifer Prokop 00:15:15 / #: Yep.

Catherine Coulter 00:15:16 / #: Then Putnam, of course, was subsumed by Random House. There used to be the big seven sisters in New York, and I think now we're down to four.

Jennifer Prokop 00:15:24 / #: Yeah, right.

Catherine Coulter 00:15:24 / #: We won't go into Amazon who just did wonderful things.

Sarah MacLean 00:15:28 / #: I am currently holding up an original copy of the Rebel Bride. Look down at your app right now, and you'll see the covers of the original Signet Regency. Could you talk a little bit about Signet as a line, because we talk a lot here about category romance, but we haven't talked really at all about Signet, which is one of the reasons why we were so excited to have you come on, because we want to talk obviously about your historicals and how much of a powerhouse you had become. But in those early days at Signet, what was the vibe? What were people thinking there?

Catherine Coulter 00:16:03 / #: Well, at that point in time, Signet had sort of developed as kind of the classiest of the Regency romances. There were some other little attempts by other houses, and I cannot remember any other imprints at this-

Sarah MacLean 00:16:25 / #: Sure.

Catherine Coulter 00:16:25 / #: I just can't remember. But with Signet, even their print runs, which were considered quite healthy then, for the Regencies, they were like 60,000. Then what happened was on the second book, I remember having, I got the plot idea and the second book, was that The Rebel Bride?

Jennifer Prokop 00:16:51 / #: Yes.

Catherine Coulter 00:16:52 / #: Okay. I told Hilary, we were down in Wall Street at a restaurant and we were having lunch. I said, "Well, Hilary," I said, "The only thing is," there was no sex in Regencies. Absolutely zippo, nada.

Jennifer Prokop 00:17:10 / #: Right.

Catherine Coulter 00:17:10 / #: I said, "I've got a plot, Hilary, but I want sex in it." It was at that point, which rarely happens, but it was an utter lack of noise in the restaurant and everybody was on point, and we got a good laugh out of that. I told her what I wanted to do and she grinned and she said, "Go for it."

Sarah MacLean 00:17:39 / #: Oh, great.

Jennifer Prokop 00:17:39 / #: Wow.

Catherine Coulter 00:17:39 / #: As a result, the print run jumped up to like 130,000.

Sarah MacLean 00:17:45 / #: Oh, look at that.

Catherine Coulter 00:17:46 / #: They were like, because everybody loved it. Then Joan Wolf, who's a friend now, always, always, and she was at Signet at that time, and so she stuck her toes in. But that was really the start of putting sex in Regencies. It was not discreet. In those days, they truly were bodice rippers. The sex could be extraordinarily explicit. I did extraordinarily explicit sex, I think through The Sherbrooke Bride series.

00:18:23 / #: Even toward the end of that, I just kind of lost interest in it and really spent much more time on the plot and the characters, because I'd read so many books. I go to conferences where editors would say, "Now, you want to have a sex scene every three chapters," or every 20 pages, or whatever. It was like it was gratuitous. That's when I realized you don't want anything gratuitous in a book, because it pulls the reader out of the book, which it did me, and I'm a reader, big reader.

00:18:59 / #: I said, "What are you doing? Who cares? These are just parts and it doesn't mean anything." In other words, most of the time, the sex scenes did not forward the plot. They detracted, they were just blah, they were just thrown in. I just kind of lost interest in it. That's when I just kind of went down, down, down, down, down, and stopped with explicit sex. Most people didn't.

00:19:27 / #: In fact, today, again, I wish that people writing romance would not depend so heavily on this really, really explicit sex, because it's not necessary. If you're going to do a sex scene, you want to have humor in it. It shouldn't be body part A, and body part B, and oh, this is so serious, and blah, blah, blah. No. Blah. Anyway, all right. I'm now off my bandwagon.

Jennifer Prokop 00:19:54 / #: That's okay.

Sarah MacLean 00:19:54 / #: I love a bandwagon.

Jennifer Prokop 00:19:58 / #: This week's episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by Cara Dion, author of Indiscreet.

Sarah MacLean 00:20:04 / #: All right, here we go. Are you ready?

Jennifer Prokop 00:20:06 / #: I'm ready.

Sarah MacLean 00:20:07 / #: On her 21st birthday, our Heroine Min is stood up at the opera by some jerk, but there just happens to be somebody in the seat next to her.

Jennifer Prokop 00:20:18 / #: Very handsome. I'm sure.

Sarah MacLean 00:20:19 / #: So handsome. They have an instant attraction. They bond over their love of music and opera and they have a one night stand, as one does. They leave the opera immediately. Have a one night stand, Moonstruck style.

Jennifer Prokop 00:20:33 / #: Moonstruck style. I love it.

Sarah MacLean 00:20:35 / #: Exactly. Except, Jen, what do you think happens the next day when Min goes to her university opera program?

Jennifer Prokop 00:20:46 / #: Is he her professor, Sarah?

Sarah MacLean 00:20:47 / #: Oh my God. He's totally her professor. Totally. It gets-

Jennifer Prokop 00:20:51 / #: You could not be more delighted by this, and I love it.

Sarah MacLean 00:20:53 / #: My favorite, this is my favorite, I cannot wait to read this. This one is for anybody who, like me, loves a professor-student romance. This is very forbidden. It's all about secrets. There's a little bit of an age gap in here, if you like an age gap romance. All I have to say about this is, it sounds frickin' great.

00:21:14 / #: There's a secret dark shadow from Mins past, makes their entanglement even more complicated. This is my favorite part. The music that drove them both forward and bound them together could also be the thing to tear them apart.

Jennifer Prokop 00:21:31 / #: Amazing. You can find Indiscreet in print, ebook and on KU. You can find out more about the author at CaraDion.author on Instagram. Thank you to Cara Dion for sponsoring this week's episode of Fated Meets.

Sarah MacLean 00:21:49 / #: You wrote seven Signets and seven Regencies, and then you moved to what you call historicals.

Catherine Coulter 00:21:58 / #: Well, no, I call them hystericals.

Sarah MacLean 00:22:02 / #: Oh, you're amazing.

Catherine Coulter 00:22:03 / #: Yes. I wrote long hystericals. That was interesting, because at that point, after I finished that contract, I had the brain to say, "I think I need a real agent and not the editor's best friend." I had met Peter Heggie, who was the Secretary of the Authors Guild in New York. I gave him a call. We had moved to San Francisco, because my husband was doing his residency here at the University of California San Francisco.

00:22:40 / #: Of course, a writer is totally portable. At that time, my company, I was kind of the golden lass. They even moved me out here to do a job that I had no knowledge, that I couldn't do, because it was installing a computer system on the West Coast. Okay.

Jennifer Prokop 00:23:00 / #: Right.

Catherine Coulter 00:23:00 / #: Honey, I can't even do Zoom. All right? Anyway, that's neither here nor there. But so I called Peter Heggie from San Francisco and told him I wanted a female agent. He gave me the name of two women and then he gave me one man. When I came back to New York on business and so forth, I met these people, and I swear to you, I do not even remember the women's names. I went to William Morris, they're a great big agency in New York.

00:23:36 / #: I met with the guy he recommended. His name was Robert Gottlieb, and he'd been out of the mail room, and that is still spelled male. He was in kind of this closet with no window. He'd been out of the mail room for like six months and we talked and I said, "What do you want to do when you grow up?" He said, "I want to be on the board of directors of William Morris by the time I'm 45."

00:24:10 / #: I never forgot that. Anyway, he became my agent. He absolutely enraged Hilary, absolutely enraged. The head of the house, of New American Library had to get involved to calm things down. My darling, this is over a 10,000 book advance, a $10,000 book advance. Because we're back in 1980.

Sarah MacLean 00:24:36 / #: Sure.

Catherine Coulter 00:24:37 / #: Okay. 1981. That worked out. Robert and I have been together longer than all of his marriages, but I give great gifts. I give great gifts.

Sarah MacLean 00:24:50 / #: You are the reason why.

Jennifer Prokop 00:24:51 / #: Yeah.

Catherine Coulter 00:24:53 / #: Oh, boy. I'll never forget this, just to aside. I'll never forget, he called me in 1987 and he was hyperventilating. He was so excited. He was on the board of directors of William Morris when he was 37.

Sarah MacLean 00:25:11 / #: Oh, that's great news.

Jennifer Prokop 00:25:12 / #: Oh, look at that news.

Catherine Coulter 00:25:12 / #: Yeah. It's a great story. Then he got out sharked by Michael Ovitz in 2000 and then started Trident Media. That started a new chapter of his life. He also married Olga, who was an orienteer at Olympic in Russia.

Sarah MacLean 00:25:33 / #: Wow.

Catherine Coulter 00:25:33 / #: He's a Russian fanatic. Anyway, and so they're still married. They have two grown kids, well almost grown kids now. Everything is good with him. As I say, we've been together for how long? Years and years.

Sarah MacLean 00:25:46 / #: That's a long time.

Catherine Coulter 00:25:46 / #: Well over 30 years. In the mid-80s, Bob Diforio, who was on the sales team for New American Library, he became the President. He and I met, and I really didn't know who he was, but we just had an immediate relationship. He was in part, he started pushing me immediately. I'll never forget, it was a Fire Song.

00:26:21 / #: It was the first, yeah, it was the book in the medieval series. They decided, you're going to love this. He decided that they were going to have a Fire Song perfume. They attached these little bottles of perfumes to all the books and shrink wrap them. The problem was...

Sarah MacLean 00:26:45 / #: Oh, my gosh.

Catherine Coulter 00:26:49 / #: They were shipped and were shipped in trucks and whatever. The perfume turned horrible.

Sarah MacLean 00:26:51 / #: Oh, no.

Catherine Coulter 00:27:00 / #: I must have gotten 2000 emails saying, not emails, letters saying, "Blech, ew."

Jennifer Prokop 00:27:08 / #: Oh, no.

Catherine Coulter 00:27:10 / #: Oh, that was so fun.

Jennifer Prokop 00:27:12 / #: Still you survived it, Catherine. The books must've been great.

Catherine Coulter 00:27:17 / #: Oh, things just. There's so many just cute little things that happened through the years.

Sarah MacLean 00:27:23 / #: That Song series. I think I read every one of those books a dozen times. I would get one and then just read them straight through-

Jennifer Prokop 00:27:32 / #: Read them all.

Sarah MacLean 00:27:32 / #: ... and then immediately start again. I wonder if you could talk a little bit, just in general, about what it was like writing. When we talk now about, when we look back on the 70s, the 80s, the early 90s, that period of time really felt like the heyday of romance. It's never been like that since.

Catherine Coulter 00:27:54 / #: It was the golden age, I call it. It really was the golden age.

Sarah MacLean 00:27:57 / #: Do you feel like you knew at the time what you were a part of?

Catherine Coulter 00:28:04 / #: Oh, no. You never do. No, no, no, no. I look back now and realize it was the golden age. Of course, this was pre-Amazon and everybody was just, the print runs were outrageous. They were over a million copies, and it was-

Jennifer Prokop 00:28:25 / #: That's wild.

Catherine Coulter 00:28:27 / #: Yeah. It was a wild time. But you really, you're writing and then a book comes out and it does like this. When we negotiate a contract and we're going to conferences and you just don't think, "Wow, I'm a part of the golden era." Because at the time, you are still a part of it and you're not looking back. You're not looking back. You're looking forward, always, always forward.

Sarah MacLean 00:28:56 / #: Tell us a little bit about what the readers are like at this point. What are these conferences like?

Catherine Coulter 00:29:01 / #: I think the last one was an RWA, but when I compare it to the ones throughout the years, they're not that different at all. They're really not. I will tell you, the big writers, like Janet Daly was huge then. Absolutely huge. I remember she would travel to a conference with her handlers. Okay. There'd be her personal handler, and then there'd be somebody from the publishing house, and then they would answer most of the questions.

00:29:42 / #: In the other workshops by the unsuperstars had then, as you had now, is people will stand up and say, "Okay, you want to do this, this, this, and this, and don't do that and don't do this." People are out. They want to get published. That's what they want more than anything in the universe. They're taking wild notes. I can remember thinking then, "This is nuts. What you want to do, darling, is to write a good story. Forget the rest of the shit." Okay?

Jennifer Prokop 00:30:15 / #: Yeah.

Catherine Coulter 00:30:17 / #: I just had a few do's and don'ts, but mainly even back then, I'd say, "Sit your butt in a chair and write. You cannot edit a blank page. It doesn't matter if you write crap, it really doesn't, because now you have something to work on." But people, they would preach. There was a lot of preaching, because I'm published and you're not. I don't know if it's still like that today.

00:30:51 / #: It was, the last time I was at a conference, it was more or less like that. These were kind of superstars, like what's her face? Oh, she retired and stopped writing. LaVyrle Spencer. You had, again, a huge disparity between the superstars and the people who desperately wanted to be published. This has been true forever. Forever.

Sarah MacLean 00:31:18 / #: While we're talking about authors, other authors, could you give us a sense of who was your community? You obviously, you're very busy, you have a day job, a high power day job, your husband is studying.

Catherine Coulter 00:31:31 / #: No, I quit my job in 1981, because I could no longer afford to work.

Sarah MacLean 00:31:39 / #: Right. It's the dream. Right?

Jennifer Prokop 00:31:40 / #: Right.

Sarah MacLean 00:31:41 / #: Of course.

Catherine Coulter 00:31:42 / #: Yeah. I was full-time writer from 1981, got a computer in 1981. It was $10,000. It was a Vector and it had a five-inch floppy disk. It took a week to learn how to do it. But I expected that knew it, but it got rid of all the crap, because if you made mistakes before on an electric typewriter, you had to retype a page.

Sarah MacLean 00:32:02 / #: Retype, right. Mm-hmm.

Catherine Coulter 00:32:06 / #: But you just press a little button and crap's gone.

Sarah MacLean 00:32:08 / #: Sure.

Catherine Coulter 00:32:08 / #: It was an amazing, amazing thing. Graham Greene, another writer. I'll never forget, he said in the mid-80s, "You're not a real writer if you use a computer." And I was thinking, "You idiot."

Jennifer Prokop 00:32:19 / #: Oh, Graham.

Sarah MacLean 00:32:21 / #: Oh, Graham. That's cute. That's cute. Graham.

Catherine Coulter 00:32:24 / #: Oh, lord. In 1985, I was in Houston. I had a couple of medical writer friends who sort of dropped out a little bit later, dropped out of the picture. But in 1985, I was in Houston, and this is when Rebecca Brandewyne was really big.

Sarah MacLean 00:32:45 / #: Of course.

Jennifer Prokop 00:32:45 / #: Oh, yeah.

Catherine Coulter 00:32:48 / #: Her mother, she really wanted to have lunch with me. I said, "Well, this will be fun to see what she has to say." She was an agent, Rebecca's mom. Then I'll never forget, she kissed me off for somebody else to have lunch with. I was kind of looking around and I see an empty chair at this table, and I go up and I say, "Can I sit here?" We met, and this was Linda Howard and Iris Johansen and Kay Hooper.

Sarah MacLean 00:33:21 / #: Oh, the whole crew.

Catherine Coulter 00:33:22 / #: We became best friends at that point. We have stayed that way forever.

Jennifer Prokop 00:33:26 / #: That's nice. That's great.

Catherine Coulter 00:33:29 / #: Yeah.

Sarah MacLean 00:33:29 / #: My gosh, and all four of you have just, you're still all writing. That's rare when you make a group of friends when you're young at the job and that you're all still there.

Catherine Coulter 00:33:41 / #: Yeah. Everybody became successful, everybody, all four of us, which was very good to happen, because you wouldn't want one or two people not as successful as you when we'd go on trips and stuff together. It worked out very, very well. I don't think there was no jealousy. Everybody was very supportive of everybody else, so it worked.

Sarah MacLean 00:34:06 / #: Around this time, one of the things that's interesting is you really had a productive period in the 80s where you were writing historicals. You wrote a few Silhouette Intimate Moments. You were clearly starting to transition into doing mystery thriller. Did you feel like you got guidance through this process? Or was this something that you just really were like, "These are the things I want to write?"

Catherine Coulter 00:34:30 / #: Well, that's a good question. I remember, I think it was in 1985, and we were in Europe on a train in Switzerland, and this entire plot came into my brain, which had never happened before, and it was contemporary. I said, "Go away. I don't want to watch contemporary go away." It didn't. I wrote it when I got home and I realized it was a short contemporary romance, and I had no idea what to do with it.

00:35:00 / #: I called a friend, Debbie Gordon, who's no longer writing, but she was very big at that time at Silhouette. She said, "Okay." She said, "This is what you tell Robert, this is what he wants to ask for." I did it, and he did, and I was with Leslie Wenger, and so it was a three book series, Aftershocks, the Aristocrat and Afterglow. She said, "Okay, now I've got the A's. What are the B's going to be?"

00:35:33 / #: I said, "Honey, there ain't no more water in this well." So it was just those three, but they were fun. They were like a little dessert, a little dish of sorbet. Because they're only about 65,000 words, as opposed to 100, 110,000. No, there was no guidance. In 1988, it was, the idea came to me. It wasn't a plot then. It was just an idea. Just to back up one second.

00:36:07 / #: This was False Pretenses, and it was my very first hardcover. It was a romantic suspense, not a suspense, a romantic suspense. The heroine was a concert pianist. When you change genres, the most important thing you want to do is to eliminate as many unknowns as you can. I picked the piano, because I'm a pianist. My Mother was a concert pianist, organist, and I knew everything about it. I knew all the music, so I knew-

Jennifer Prokop 00:36:44 / #: Interesting. Yeah.

Catherine Coulter 00:36:44 / #: ... what I was talking about. We're in New York City, and then it was of course a mystery, but it was a romantic suspense, because you can't be a romance unless there's a central core that's a man and a woman getting together in a relationship. Then, everything else can be around it. It doesn't matter. It can be Mars, it can be murders or can be anything you want, but to be a romance, you have to have the central core being the relationship.

00:37:16 / #: That's what it was. They wanted to push it as this. I don't even remember. I said, "No, it's a romantic suspense." They said, "Okay." That was the first hardcover. Then I wrote probably four or five more contemporary romantic suspense, which were a lot of fun to do. Anyway, I was writing probably three or four books a year. It was easy. Now, of course, I write, never mind, because now I'm an elder.

00:37:48 / #: But anyway, I was writing a whole lot of books a year, and I'll never forget. Then Putnam and Putnam had bought, as I said, New American Library. The head of Putnam was Phyllis Grann. She's Probably the best woman publisher, she was, in the world. I absolutely would kill for her. She would call me up and say, "Catherine, I need a quote." I said, "What would you like me to say?" Whatever she wanted from me, she got, because she was absolutely wonderful.

00:38:27 / #: They went back to New York and there was this big round table at the plaza in the tearoom there in the court, and I was introduced to my new editor, and they made an offer that was just outrageous, absolutely outrageous. I'll not tell you what it is, but it was outrageous. I went there, and what they wanted was the hysterical romances.

Jennifer Prokop 00:38:58 / #: The hysterical romances.

Catherine Coulter 00:39:03 / #: Well, I try to make them funny. I really do. Oh, one thing I wanted to add, talk about luck, those first six or seven Regencies, I went back and rewrote them.

Sarah MacLean 00:39:17 / #: Yeah, I want To talk about that.

Catherine Coulter 00:39:20 / #: I made them so much better. I turned them into historical romances and I made them funny. Then they hit the New York Times, because they were no longer Regencies.

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Sarah MacLean 00:40:50 / #: Did you go to Putnam and say, "I want to rewrite these?"

Catherine Coulter 00:40:53 / #: Yeah. Yeah. I said I really would like them because I think that they're kind of a bummer to me now, and I don't think I can make them 1000% percent better and make them longer and richer and funnier and all that. They said, "Sure, go for it."

Sarah MacLean 00:41:10 / #: That's incredible. What is that process like? This is the mid-80s, so it's only five or six years. It's not even a decade, since they came out. What was that process like as a writer to revise essentially yourself-

Jennifer Prokop 00:41:31 / #: Right.

Sarah MacLean 00:41:32 / #: ... at a distance?

Catherine Coulter 00:41:33 / #: It was easy. It was very, very easy, because the book was already there. I didn't have to worry about, oh dear, is that plot going to work here and there? No, no, no. I didn't have to worry about it. All I had to worry about was let's make this really, really fun.

Sarah MacLean 00:41:49 / #: Was it driven by, I'm a better writer now. I've had more practice?

Catherine Coulter 00:41:56 / #: Yes, yes.

Sarah MacLean 00:41:57 / #: Or the rules don't apply to me in the same way anymore, or both?

Catherine Coulter 00:42:00 / #: Both. Both. Of course, Regencies, ever since Joan and I were big at Signet, Regency started changing.

Sarah MacLean 00:42:10 / #: Well, they got sexier.

Catherine Coulter 00:42:11 / #: Yeah. That was because of Joan and Me, which was, and I can take credit for that and so did she.

Sarah MacLean 00:42:18 / #: Good.

Catherine Coulter 00:42:18 / #: That was fun.

Sarah MacLean 00:42:19 / #: You're at the Plaza, they want historicals?

Catherine Coulter 00:42:23 / #: They wanted historicals. In a period of three and a half years, I wrote three trilogies.

Sarah MacLean 00:42:30 / #: Wow.

Catherine Coulter 00:42:31 / #: The Wyndham Legacy, the Legacy Trilogy, the Fire Trilogy, and another trilogy that escapes my brain at the moment. But it had never happened in my life, but I was burned in my toes.

Jennifer Prokop 00:42:44 / #: Yeah, I'm sure.

Catherine Coulter 00:42:46 / #: Absolutely burned in my toes. It was in 1995, and I was at family reunion in Texas, and my sister, who has never done this before or since, walked up to me and said, "Have you ever heard of a little town on the coast of Oregon called The Cove? They make the world's greatest ice cream and bad stuff happens." I just went on point.

Sarah MacLean 00:43:17 / #: What?

Catherine Coulter 00:43:17 / #: I said, "Oh my heavens, my heavens." I told my editor, and of course, I understood their position. If it ain't broke, why fix it?

Sarah MacLean 00:43:31 / #: Sure.

Catherine Coulter 00:43:32 / #: But I really dug in my heels.

Jennifer Prokop 00:43:33 / #: Well, they'd milked to you for nine books in three years.

Catherine Coulter 00:43:38 / #: But at that point, I had enough power. I said, "Give me a chance." Then, that's when I wrote The Cove. Then when they got it, they wanted to make it into a hardcover. I said, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no." I said, "Failure is well and good, but you don't want to fail in hardcover. Who knows how this book will be received?" They brought it out in paperback in 1996, I believe, and it really did extraordinarily well.

00:44:11 / #: I was very happy for that. Then the publisher called and I said, "Well, when's the next one in the series?" I said, "What series? What are you talking about?" I kid you not, this will happen. It happened. There was this voice in the back of my head, and he said, "Catherine, what about me?" It was Dillon Savage. Then, The Maze was basically Sherlock's book, and this is the book they got together.

00:44:45 / #: Then after that, you had The Target, which is one of my all-time favorite books with The Hunt, Ramsey Hunt, and Emma. I'll never forget, I wrote international thrillers with JT Ellison, six of them. I'll never forget, JT told me, he said, "Well, a series isn't really a series until book four." I was kind of laughing at her. She was perfectly right. She was totally right.

00:45:14 / #: The fourth book, The Edge, started that series, and then it just went from there. At that point, I was writing one historical a year and one FBI thriller a year. It worked very, very well, because they're such disparate genres and your brain gets unconstipated. You know what I mean?

Jennifer Prokop 00:45:39 / #: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Sarah MacLean 00:45:39 / #: Yeah, sure.

Catherine Coulter 00:45:41 / #: Then it's just been about, I guess about four or five years ago, I could just do one book a year, and that was fine. That was perfectly fine. It's been wonderful. I feel blessed, very, very blessed, and very, very lucky and have met so many fascinating writers and publishers over the years. As I say, Robert and I are still together.

Jennifer Prokop 00:46:10 / #: Amazing.

Catherine Coulter 00:46:10 / #: He'll come up and talk about, yada, yada, it's wonderful.

Jennifer Prokop 00:46:15 / #: Can we return maybe to The Sherbrooke Bride for a second?

Catherine Coulter 00:46:19 / #: Sure.

Jennifer Prokop 00:46:20 / #: Sarah talked about it being one of her favorites. You mentioned that so many readers still talk about it.

Catherine Coulter 00:46:27 / #: Yeah.

Jennifer Prokop 00:46:29 / #: When we're talking about romance, why do you think this is the book that so many romance readers connected to? Is it the primordial Catherine Coulter book? What made it the one?

Catherine Coulter 00:46:41 / #: I think that everybody, women, I think that women respond visually to a real alpha male who's an asshole, basically. But he's a real alpha male, and it's how the woman, he ends up worshiping her toenails. I think women, it's on a visceral level, they love that. They're just fascinated by the alpha male. That's my own feeling.

Jennifer Prokop 00:47:14 / #: I also think, I was speaking to a friend of mine earlier today about how we were interviewing you, Catherine, and my friend Sophie Jordan, who also writes historicals was saying that, we talked about how you really mastered the grovel in your books. You put them through the ringer at the end, because they've been such assholes.

Sarah MacLean 00:47:38 / #: That is a great joy.

Catherine Coulter 00:47:39 / #: You're not going to find an Alan Alda character as a woman's hero. Let's get real here. A beta male is of no interest to anybody, except fixing your computer.

Jennifer Prokop 00:47:55 / #: But truthfully, I think that the magic of a Catherine Coulter book is that sort of sense, as you said, worshiping her to her toenails only once he has been clubbed over the head with how terrible he's been to her. It's that punishment too.

Catherine Coulter 00:48:12 / #: It's discipline. Men love to be disciplined, even if they don't admit it. They just love it. They love it. On the other hand, the youngest brother, Tysen, who starred in The Scottish Bride, that's probably my favorite, because he evolved. He evolved so much, and he was such a good man. I take it back about the alpha male, because Tysen was absolutely amazing to me. I loved him.

Jennifer Prokop 00:48:55 / #: Was it a challenge to write someone who then was really different?

Catherine Coulter 00:48:58 / #: Oh, no. No. I loved him from the moment that book started when he was dealing with his three children, and he didn't know what to do with them. He evolved so much and turned into such a kind wonderful person who was never an asshole. He was just stupid. He wasn't stupid, that's the wrong word. He was just caught up in this view, in this world view of himself that was so limiting.

00:49:39 / #: It was so very limiting. His brothers always made fun of him. I'll never forget in the beginning of Sherbrooke Bride, when they're having their quarterly bastard meeting. That just came out of my fingertips. I said, "What are you doing?" Then Tysen goes, "Ah," and runs out. He wants none of that. But that was great sport.

Jennifer Prokop 00:50:09 / #: As you think about your career, as you sort of look back, and obviously forward as well, you show no signs of stopping. Are there moments that you can sort of pinpoint of particular challenge as a writer or from the genre? Is there some lesson that you were sort of hard-learned that you can share with us?

Catherine Coulter 00:50:36 / #: Let me just say, I do not believe in writer's block, and I never have. What I believe in is a bad plot. It happened one time, and it was an FBI thriller. I don't even remember which one, but I got to page 85 and it had been a bear. Then all of a sudden it stopped cold and I realized, "Okay, this is a shitty plot." I threw the 85 pages in the garbage can and started over. Because if you're a writer, you have to be honest with yourself and what you're producing.

00:51:14 / #: When a book stops in its tracks and the characters look at you and say, "Please go away," it's a bad plot. It's up to you not to try to keep forcing it. The trick is you have to trust that there's another plot in the parking lot in your brain that's going to come driving out, and it will. It did. That was really the only time. But no, I'll never forget, this might be interesting to writers.

00:51:51 / #: With The Cove when I first wrote it, and my editor was the head of Berkeley, Leslie Gelbman, wonderful, wonderful editor and leader. When I first wrote The Cove, it was a brand new genre for me. I wrote the entire plot out in the first 50 pages. You know how she dealt with it? She called me up, she says, and she wanted to see what I was doing. She called me back and she was saying, "Catherine, okay, now, you know what the plot is. Tell me the story."

Jennifer Prokop 00:52:35 / #: Oh, I love that.

Catherine Coulter 00:52:36 / #: That's what she said.

Jennifer Prokop 00:52:36 / #: That's a good piece of advice.

Catherine Coulter 00:52:38 / #: I had written the whole thing out in the first 50 pages so the reader would know everything. Then she was just so matter of fact, "Now, tell me the story." So, I did.

Jennifer Prokop 00:52:49 / #: Amazing.

Catherine Coulter 00:52:50 / #: A good editor, you've got to be lucky in your editors too. I know some authors who have had nine editors at the same house, and this is never good. This is always sucky. I've been very, very lucky in my editors.

Jennifer Prokop 00:53:06 / #: Who is your editor now, Catherine?

Catherine Coulter 00:53:08 / #: My editor now is a brand new person. I'm with William Morrow, and her name is May Chen. She's fairly hands-off. Actually. I'd had David Highfill. He had the absolute gall to retire and move to Tuscany.

Sarah MacLean 00:53:24 / #: How dare.

Jennifer Prokop 00:53:25 / #: That's terrible.

Catherine Coulter 00:53:27 / #: I was just cursing him, "Don't you dare go anywhere." He said, "I promise that I have spoken to May, and she will do very good by you. Please trust me, Catherine, and don't shoot her." She's very kind. To be very honest, my husband is basically my editor on the FBI thrillers. He can't write his way out of a paper bag, but he's an incredible editor.

Sarah MacLean 00:53:56 / #: That's great.

Catherine Coulter 00:53:57 / #: Since I've become an elder, I've slowed down. I had decided with Reckoning, the book that's coming out next week, I don't want to be under contact anymore. I want to just write what I want to write, and then I'll sell it. Then they said, "Oh, please, please. Dah, da, da, da, da." I said, "Okay, but I don't want, make it two years." "Okay. Anything you want. Not a problem. Not a problem." I'm on page 80, and the outline is due a year from this month.

Jennifer Prokop 00:54:27 / #: There you go.

Sarah MacLean 00:54:29 / #: Well, so there you go. You can't stop.

Catherine Coulter 00:54:31 / #: You can't stop. You can't stop. But I guess five years ago, I was asked if I was a pantser or a plotter, and I didn't know what they were talking about, but I'm definitely a pantser, are you?

Sarah MacLean 00:54:44 / #: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Catherine Coulter 00:54:46 / #: Which means you're always rewriting and rewriting and changing.

Sarah MacLean 00:54:51 / #: Constantly.

Catherine Coulter 00:54:51 / #: [inaudible 00:54:52 / #] build up, we call it. Constantly, constantly, constantly.

Sarah MacLean 00:54:54 / #: Which is why it terrified me that you rewrote The Rebel Bride. I was like, "Oh God, I can never go back. I'll throw it all out and start over."

Catherine Coulter 00:55:04 / #: No, no, no. You don't understand. The book was there and the plot was there.

Sarah MacLean 00:55:08 / #: Yes, right.

Catherine Coulter 00:55:09 / #: So there were no hurries. Now, you're just putting on different tree ornaments.

Sarah MacLean 00:55:13 / #: Nice.

Catherine Coulter 00:55:13 / #: Different lights. It was wonderful.

Sarah MacLean 00:55:15 / #: I bet, I bet. Catherine, tell us a little bit, I want to just talk a little about the shift from Catherine Coulter, romance trailblazer, to Catherine Coulter, real powerhouse in thrillers. Was it an easy transition in the world? Meaning did thrillers welcome you? I know that it's tough to be a woman writing thrillers in the thriller world. I'm wondering, did you have that experience or was it very generally welcoming?

Catherine Coulter 00:55:51 / #: That's a very good observation and the absolute truth is I never thought about it.

Sarah MacLean 00:55:56 / #: That's good.

Catherine Coulter 00:55:57 / #: The first time when they put, it took a while, they put the second book, The Maze in Hardcover, and it made the times, but it wasn't in the top five. But then they just kept getting stronger and stronger. By the time I went to, actually, I've never been to [inaudible 00:56:22 / #], I was just not interested. All my friends said they didn't like it. But anyway, ThrillerFest in New York City was a different matter.

00:56:32 / #: By the time I started going to ThrillerFest, the FBI series was really well grounded and was doing well. It wasn't like the third, fourth, or fifth book. It was like the eighth or ninth book in that series. There was never a problem. It was very welcoming. I really liked Lee Child. I just met a whole bunch of really, really nice people, men as well as women, like Lisa Gardner, who was such a sweetheart.

00:57:08 / #: I can't remember other names at the point, because I haven't been in three years, but it was just very, very welcoming. Well, the first year I went, it wasn't because I was interested. They had made me the interview of the year or something, I can't remember what they called it, where you're in front and you're interviewed by somebody, whatever. Anyway, so I just never experienced that. But again, a lot of people, men and women who go to ThrillerFest who are either unpublished or still in like the B rung, I do not know what their experiences are.

00:57:59 / #: Anybody I ever met was wonderful, and I'm not a jerk. I'll talk to everybody. It didn't matter. It was just never an issue. At the very beginning, "Oh, do you write children's books?" That kind of crap, but it just didn't matter. People would say, "Oh, you wrote romance?" I said, "Yes, yes, yes, yes." Because I'm not ashamed of them at all. I love them. I wish I could still write two books a year. One, a hysterical. When couldn't write two books a year, that's when I went to the novellas with Grace and Sherbrooke.

Sarah MacLean 00:58:38 / #: Right.

Catherine Coulter 00:58:39 / #: Are you familiar with those at all?

Sarah MacLean 00:58:41 / #: Yes. Yes. I've read them all.

Catherine Coulter 00:58:43 / #: Oh, well, you're so wonderful. Well, the sixth one will be out in October, because Nicole, who is God, and she heads up a digital division at Trident, which is Roberts agency. Oh, she's incredible. She is absolutely incredible. If you ever, her name is Nicole Robson. R-O-B-S-O-N.

00:59:11 / #: If you ever need anything to do, she's at the Trident Media Group in New York City, and she is smart. She's kind. She knows everything. She would help you without a problem. Anyway, she likes to put them near Halloween, because they're whoo-whoo.

Sarah MacLean 00:59:37 / #: Yeah. Well, that is the piece of the Coulter puzzle that I think is so fascinating as a writer, just looking at your career, you really have told so many different kinds of stories. For writers who are often told in a genre where we are often told, "Stay in your lane." I think part of the reason why The Sherbrooke Brides shattered everything I had thought historical was is because there was that ghosty piece.

Catherine Coulter 01:00:11 / #: The Virgin Bride, yeah.

Sarah MacLean 01:00:12 / #: Yeah, you'd never expect it. But I really feel like one of the-

Catherine Coulter 01:00:18 / #: And she lives in the past, I love it. She found her happy ever after.

Sarah MacLean 01:00:24 / #: Right. I think that there is, if you've never read Catherine Coulter's romances, I think there are so many different avenues to take, and that's really remarkable. You're a trailblazer. There's a reason why we reached out.

Catherine Coulter 01:00:44 / #: Well, you are so sweet. If you're kissing up, you're doing it very well.

Sarah MacLean 01:00:49 / #: Thank you. I'm really not. I really do think your books are great.

Jennifer Prokop 01:00:52 / #: Yeah, and we love the genre, and we love... God, we love romance so much. We just love romance.

Catherine Coulter 01:00:59 / #: Well, if you love romance so much still, I very rarely read contemporary romances because, I have found them still to be, we call it topping dicks. You tell a story and get rid of the stuff that's extraneous. It's like people are using horrible language. I stopped about 12 books ago. I never use bad language anymore, because it's gratuitous. You don't need it.

01:01:34 / #: There's always another way to say it without saying fuck. There is another way to say that. Sometimes that's appropriate, and I have to grind my teeth not to do it. But again, so many books, you have gratuitous bad language, you've read them, and you have gratuitous sex scenes. Stop it. Just stop it. Tell a good story.

Sarah MacLean 01:01:57 / #: Can I ask you a question? Do you think that there is a similar issue with gratuitous violence and thrillers?

Catherine Coulter 01:02:03 / #: Of course. Anything that's unnecessary is gratuitous. If you want to talk about ripping somebody's guts out and eating them, well, good luck. I'm not going to read your frickin' book. I'm not going to. Why do I care. You killed this person because of this, that, and the other reason, get on with the story. Yeah. Gratuitous violence, those three things are the major three.

01:02:31 / #: You hit it on the nail, it hit the nail on the hammer there, hit the nail on the head with a hammer. Okay, love that. I just hate gratuitous stuff. In the romances, it's still rife. I don't know why this is. I don't understand. It would seem to me that the genre would have weeded this out over the years, but it has not. Anyway, my soap box is now in the closet again.

Jennifer Prokop 01:03:01 / #: Catherine, I wonder, we end all of our conversations this way, so I hope you'll humor us. When we talk about trailblazers, we often come to the table with a preconceived idea of the answer to this question, but what is the hallmark of a Catherine Coulter novel? What is the thing you leave on the table every time?

Catherine Coulter 01:03:29 / #: Oh, you guys are just full of good questions. Let me just do the, address the FBI series.

Jennifer Prokop 01:03:37 / #: Yeah.

Catherine Coulter 01:03:38 / #: My promise to the reader is there is always justice at the end, and I will not kill off a major character. But there has got to be, it's always a good ending. Justice. We always have justice at the end, so there's no, what's the word, existential crap going on that leaves the reader wanting to streak. No, no, it's done. This chapter now is done, handled, although I do bring characters back a lot.

Sarah MacLean 01:04:12 / #: What about the romances?

Catherine Coulter 01:04:14 / #: The romances, I would say that after I rewrote those first six books, I realized that the trick really is to have as much humor as you can. If you are dialogue driven, which I hope most writers are, because after a page and a half, and this is another thing romance novels do wrong, page and a half of introspection, and you're already lost. You can't even remember what the character asked.

01:04:45 / #: The character asks a question, and we have a page and a half of introspection. What are you doing? Anyway, if you can say something allowed, you say it aloud, and if you can do it, have humor. If you have humor, just about anything will fly. I didn't do it in all the books, but there is humor whenever I can do it, and they're going to end well.

Jennifer Prokop 01:05:10 / #: Yeah. Wow.

Catherine Coulter 01:05:14 / #: But everybody's going to say that they're going to end well because a romance novel, because that's what the reader expects. These two people are going to go through the wringer, and then they're going to end out on the other side, and they're going to be mated for life. That is why women really like romance, because it's filled with hope. It's filled with hope. No matter what you endure in all of this, it's going to work out Well.

Sarah MacLean 01:05:39 / #: Well, thrillers too.

Jennifer Prokop 01:05:40 / #: Right, justice is served.

Sarah MacLean 01:05:41 / #: People often comment on, "Oh, so many romance novelists end up writing thrillers." The reality is, it makes perfect sense to us that that's a possible career arc. Because justice and hope being served are, they're both happily ever afters, in a certain sense, right?

Catherine Coulter 01:05:59 / #: They are. They're happily ever afters for that one plot. Okay. There are other things going on, of course, but no, you're perfectly right. You're perfectly right. There's hope and there's justice, and things are going to be okay. I promise you that. No matter what I do to those characters, it's going to be okay. Did you happen to get an ARC of Reckoning?

Sarah MacLean 01:06:25 / #: No. No, but I'm going to ask for one.

Jennifer Prokop 01:06:27 / #: We can ask Karen for them.

Catherine Coulter 01:06:29 / #: Well, I prefer that you bought it.

Jennifer Prokop 01:06:32 / #: I'll do that too.

Sarah MacLean 01:06:33 / #: Fine. We'll do that too.

Jennifer Prokop 01:06:35 / #: I'll take those orders. That's fine.

Catherine Coulter 01:06:38 / #: Well, there's a surprise at the end because readers have been bugging me about this for a long time, and I'm not going to tell you what it is.

Jennifer Prokop 01:06:45 / #: Okay.

Sarah MacLean 01:06:46 / #: Great.

Catherine Coulter 01:06:48 / #: I don't know if it's great, but we'll see.

Sarah MacLean 01:06:51 / #: I'm sure it will be. So Catherine, one last question. As you think about your more than 80 books, I think we're at now.

Catherine Coulter 01:07:01 / #: I'm on 88.

Sarah MacLean 01:07:03 / #: Number 88.

Jennifer Prokop 01:07:04 / #: Wow, yeah.

Sarah MacLean 01:07:05 / #: In 88 books, we've talked about books that your readers have really loved that have resonated. Is there a book that you think back on and think, "That was really fabulous? That's the one I wish everybody could read forever?"

Catherine Coulter 01:07:27 / #: Yes, indeed. My own personal favorite is Beyond Eden. I wrote it in the 90s, and it's my very, very own personal favorite. That book moved me profoundly.

Jennifer Prokop 01:07:39 / #: Why?

Catherine Coulter 01:07:39 / #: The heroine Lindsay. Her attitude on life and how she deals with what she goes through, which is a whole lot. Have you guys read it?

Jennifer Prokop 01:07:53 / #: I don't think I have read this one.

Sarah MacLean 01:07:55 / #: No, I don't think so.

Catherine Coulter 01:07:56 / #: Okay. Well, again, it's a contemporary and it's got a mystery in it. But again, it's a romantic suspense, and we have the hero in it is what you want every hero to be down to his toenails, which he buffs. Well, I don't know if he does. But it will move you, I hope, profoundly. It ended up right. It ended up right.

Sarah MacLean 01:08:33 / #: Wow. You know what's amazing?

Jennifer Prokop 01:08:35 / #: A lot of that was amazing.

Sarah MacLean 01:08:37 / #: Aside from that whole conversation, what's amazing is a lot of these interviews, it's as though no one has ever asked these women to talk about their life in romance. A lot of people have not been asked about that.

Jennifer Prokop 01:08:53 / #: Right.

Sarah MacLean 01:08:53 / #: And so the stories are just wild.

Jennifer Prokop 01:08:57 / #: One of the things that is really persistent in this generation of authors that we've interviewed is kind of their success feels really predicated on whether or not they were lucky enough to find good people. It was really clear from talking to Catherine Coulter that she felt really lucky and found a lot of really good people, not just friends, author friends, not just her husband, but in publishing itself.

Sarah MacLean 01:09:22 / #: Yeah, an agent who she felt supported by, editors who she felt were really doing the best work for the books. I loved that story about The Cove about when she, the first book, I love the whole story about her sister giving her the idea, et cetera. But also, I loved that she went to Leslie Gelbman, who we've talked about before, because Leslie was Nora Roberts's editor and was J.R. Ward's editor Jayne Ann Krentz's editor. Somebody who is in the ether as an important voice in romance, but when she talked about Leslie Gelbman responding and saying, "Okay, so this is the plot, but where's the story."

Jennifer Prokop 01:10:03 / #: Yeah, tell me the story.

Sarah MacLean 01:10:04 / #: It's so remarkable when, you're right, an editor just could have easily said, "This is not going to work for you," and then, right, she doesn't get to travel down that path.

Jennifer Prokop 01:10:19 / #: I think that part, I was really interested in because it feels like, and I think this is, you obviously are in publishing in a way I'm not, it is clear to me when I talk to people, to other authors now that there's still a real sense of it takes a village to be a successful author in publishing and who is that village and who's supporting you or your awareness of them as people that have helped you along the way and how long-standing. Her talking about Robert Gottlieb's many, his kids and his wife and the way that she knows people.

Sarah MacLean 01:10:57 / #: She's outlasted so many people in his life and these relationships, it feels different in a lot of ways. Obviously, I'm a writer, so I don't know what it's like to be other things, but I did for many years have a job in corporate America and the relationships don't feel quite so personal in those jobs. But this long-standing editorial relationship, long-standing agent relationships, these relationships where somebody knows your kids and knows your family, and we talk about books being orphaned, authors being orphaned by their editors, and it really does feel that way.

Jennifer Prokop 01:11:36 / #: We now are smart enough and record these kind of right after we're done.

Sarah MacLean 01:11:41 / #: Immediately after the conversation.

Jennifer Prokop 01:11:42 / #: Just got off the, and so it's interesting, because the first thing you think of is sometimes, not necessarily, but I was really interested in her talking about the golden age of romance. Of course you wouldn't realize it at the time, but looking back that she could say, "Of course."

Sarah MacLean 01:11:59 / #: Well, just the way the story goes. Where she went to a lunch at the Plaza with sales and they offered her a giant deal for more historicals at this lunch at the Plaza.

Jennifer Prokop 01:12:14 / #: Right. That doesn't happen anymore?

Sarah MacLean 01:12:16 / #: Gone are the days, maybe it happens for someone else.

Jennifer Prokop 01:12:20 / #: Colleen Hoover probably gets lunch at the Plaza. I actually don't know if you can have lunch at the Plaza anymore, but the point is...

Sarah MacLean 01:12:27 / #: It really does feel like there was this moment in time when so many writers were just powerhouses. Now what's interesting is I was thinking as she was talking, "Oh, well there is something going on right now." There are writers who are powerhouses right now.

Jennifer Prokop 01:12:48 / #: Yes.

Sarah MacLean 01:12:49 / #: But it feels like many, many fewer, she talked about getting letters from her readers, but powerhouses now sometimes are grassroots, right? Like readers-

Jennifer Prokop 01:13:00 / #: Like from TikTok.

Sarah MacLean 01:13:02 / #: Yes, right.

Jennifer Prokop 01:13:02 / #: The readers have decided that this person is a powerhouse, but she didn't talk very much about readers.

Sarah MacLean 01:13:08 / #: No, no, no. For her, it was very much, she seemed to feel as though it was a top-down kind of-

Jennifer Prokop 01:13:17 / #: She was part of the publishing ecosystem, right?

Sarah MacLean 01:13:20 / #: Mm-hmm.

Jennifer Prokop 01:13:21 / #: I thought that was also just really interesting to consider the way our relationship with authors have changed, but at the same time, she's really plugged into Facebook. She updates it every day. This is not someone who isn't disinterested in the reader's experience-

Sarah MacLean 01:13:35 / #: No, not at all.

Jennifer Prokop 01:13:37 / #: That's one big thing that seems very clearly different.

Sarah MacLean 01:13:39 / #: Yeah. I was grateful to hear you talk about burnout, because it's something that I think a lot of us are thinking about right now, nine books in three years in the early 90s.

Jennifer Prokop 01:13:52 / #: That was a lot. That is a ton of work, and it feels like that was a huge ask from her publisher. I'm glad that she talked about just like her brain kind of just fizzing out and needing to have a moment of something completely different to rejuvenate herself.

Sarah MacLean 01:14:11 / #: I loved a lot of that conversation, because I think that she is one of those people who made a career of writing as a writer and has evolved by virtue of luckily, her own passions and the way the market demanded.

Jennifer Prokop 01:14:29 / #: Then that was interesting because we see the clear evolution from romance to romantic suspense to kind of thrillers. Some of that had to do with, now I can just write one book a year or one book every two years. But I was also really interested in what would drive her to go back and then rewrite books.

Sarah MacLean 01:14:47 / #: Oh, yeah.

Jennifer Prokop 01:14:48 / #: That was fascinating because she's a writer, right? She's a craftsman. We've talked about this before that, and I don't want to put words in her mouth, because we didn't ask her this, but we've talked about this sort of, some people think of themselves as artists, and some people think of themselves as craftsmen. It feels like a true craftsman's choice to say, "That book bums me out," which is what she said.

01:15:13 / #: I think there further evidence of that is the discussion of you can't revise if there's nothing on the page, the first draft does not matter. That's just the raw material. That's the thing, the artist is like, "Okay, I've got one shot with this huge block of clay to make my sculpture," but writers are different. I thought that was also really interesting to hear her process, and it doesn't surprise me at all. It's a bit of a segue that someone who herself is so funny and so sharp and so observationally on point would think that humor is a really key ingredient of making a book.

Sarah MacLean 01:15:51 / #: Oh my god, the hystericals.

Jennifer Prokop 01:15:54 / #: Oh yeah, that's perfect.

Sarah MacLean 01:15:56 / #: Hilarious. The fact that right away when I called out The Sherbrooke Bride at the very jump, she was like, "Yeah, we call those heroes assholes." We totally do, but things are different, but they are also the same. I think that there's so much about what she said, especially when she spoke about conferences and the craft workshops, and this is the only way you can do it and throw everybody else's book out. You only use mine.

01:16:24 / #: The one thing that seems to run through all of these conversations, I think to a person is don't let other people's rules impact your book. Your story is your story. I hear so often, and you do too. We see it constantly on Twitter and in writing groups and all over the place, these kind of hard and fast. You must do it this way. You must traditionally publish this way. You must independently publish this way. None of these people followed.

01:17:00 / #: I don't think one single person we've talked to for this series has followed the bouncing ball. They've all had some moment where they've of deviated. I love, "I had lunch with Hilary Ross and I told her I wanted to put sex in a Regency, and she said, go with it." It made me think so much of Vivian Stephens and how Vivian just kept saying, "Yeah, do you, and that's what makes the books good."

Jennifer Prokop 01:17:26 / #: What a conversation. That was pretty awesome. Life goals, it's great. It's great.

Sarah MacLean 01:17:35 / #: Catherine's latest book is Reckoning. It came out in August, so it is on shelves now. We will put in show notes all the books that Jenn and I have loved by her over the years, or some subset of the books that I have loved over the years by her, because I've loved so many of them. Obviously, with the caveat that these are older historicals, so enter with caution, they're going to be bananas. I can promise that.

Jennifer Prokop 01:18:04 / #: Look, if the author was calling them hystericals as she was writing them, then the amplification of that can only be more amazing.

Sarah MacLean 01:18:11 / #: Well, I said with her that I spoke with Sophie Jordan this morning and we talked about the grovel. She really does it. She knows the job. When it comes to a grovel, these heroes have to be broken or what did she say? Disciplined.

Jennifer Prokop 01:18:25 / #: They like it though.

Sarah MacLean 01:18:26 / #: The other thing Sophie said to me was talk about taking the finger, and I think that's true. I think anybody, when you dip your toe into these old Catherine Coulter historicals, that's what you're going to get every time. A real take the finger experience.

Jennifer Prokop 01:18:40 / #: Perfect.

Sarah MacLean 01:18:41 / #: I'm Sarah MacLean. I'm here with my friend Jen Prokop. This is Fated Mates and you can find us every Wednesday. Thank you as always. To our sponsors, Lumi Labs and Cara Dion, be sure to check out Indiscrete, Cara's book, right now in KU or print.

Jennifer Prokop 01:18:58 / #: Have a great week, everyone.

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S05.08: Iris Johansen: Trailblazer

Our Trailblazer episodes continue this week with Iris Johansen, who began writing category romance in the heyday of the format at Loveswept. During her varied career, she’s written categories, historicals and now writes thrillers and crime novels.

In this episode, we talk about the founding of Loveswept, about how she learned to write, and about the power of storytelling. We also talk about the way her career has grown and evolved—about transitioning to thrillers, about writing the Eve Duncan series for 28 books, and about keeping it in the family and writing with her son. We had a wonderful time hearing these stories. Thank you to Iris Johansen for making the time for us.

Thanks to Callie Chase, author of Dishonor Among Thieves and Sara Wetmore, author of The Christmas Script, for sponsoring the episode.

Our next read along is Claire Kent’s HOLD. It’s a prison planet romance, so…you know…enter at your own risk. Get it at Amazon or in Kindle Unlimited.

Show Notes

People Iris Mentioned: Loveswept editor Carolyn Nichols, Agent Andrea Cirillo, Sandra Brown, Kay Hooper, Fayrene Preston, Roy Johansen, Catherine Coulter, Linda Howard, Kathleen Woodiwiss, Johanna Lindsey, Jayne Ann Krentz, Ann Maxwell.

The story of Roy Johansen's visit to the submarine at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry.

Sponsors

This week’s episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by:

Callie Chase, author of Dishonor Among Thieves,
available at Amazon.

Visit calliechase.com for more information and signed books!

and

Sara Wetmore, author of The Christmas Script,
available at Amazon.

Visit sarawetmore.com

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